


Selkie Skin

by Ossicle



Series: Selkie Skin [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Blood Magic, Blood and Injury, Captivity, Dark Fantasy, Dubious Consent, Flawed firsts, M/M, Selkies, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-02-14 18:40:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 24
Words: 56,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13013811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ossicle/pseuds/Ossicle
Summary: Law is a selkie, Kidd is no one. They find in each other a way to endure the brutality of their lives, and eventually, a way to return to the sea.Part 1: An injured, cursed Law is captured by a human boy. Kidd's really not sure what he's doing but he's never wanted anything so much.





	1. Shiny thing

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a traditional selkie story, but then I decided to indulge my weakness for dark fantasy settings and throw in a lot more grrr and fwah so now it's a whole other thing. Selkies are one of a whole range of shapeshifters who have humanlike societies apart from humans. There's just a jumble of cultural/mythological sources. Who the fuck knows where it's set. But anyway there’s witches, and warring clans, and whores, and whatever else constitutes dark fantasy.
> 
> About the warnings: Violence level will range from ‘subtle’ to ‘indulgent’ to ‘why.’ Lots of blood/injury/scar stuff. Underage tag bc main characters are teenagers. Rape tag for strong themes of sexual violence, dubcon, and offscreen/suggested assault, though there's no explicit noncon in part 1. Rape tag will never apply to the main pairing. I’ll put specific warnings before each chapter, but they’ll contain spoilers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: Graphic violence, mild torture (cutting), threat of rape, non-consensual touching

 

* * *

 

 

First there was blood, blooming delicately through the water like a blush, and then there was pain. Law watched the red cloud drift by in shock before a second spinning blade came shooting toward him and he gathered his wits. Not quite in time. It caught him and sliced him open to the ribs.

A monstrous form descended toward him—a forest of arms darkening the water and reaching for him. He fled.

He was faster than almost anything else in the sea, but not faster than the _words_ the monster sent darting after him. He swam like he’d never done before, but the curse snaked along in the trail of red he was leaving and caught him within minutes. It struck like a rain of knives and sunk into every inch of him, biting and tearing.

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd watched the storm pass from a sheltered overhang atop ‘his’ cliff. It was strange for the season, sudden and violent, passing as quickly as it’d come and leaving a dense gloom over the rocky black coast.

Kidd loved storms. After bad ones like this, there was always something new washed up on the rocky shore at the bottom of the cliff. Sometimes just pieces of broken barrels, but sometimes cargo or even fruit. Often it was pieces of people—sailors, merchants, slaves. He was pretty good at finding them before the vultures did, and not at all squeamish about picking pieces of fine fabrics or shiny brass buttons off their bloated corpses.

The horizon cleared to reveal a dying sun, and an orange glow saturated the after-storm haze. It illuminated him, a long-limbed youth reclining against the black stone. Messy red hair and harsh, scraped-up face. Kidd sat back to watch the coastline, cleaning broken nails with the tip of a knife he’d forged himself—a long, elegantly tapered thing wrapped with leather at the base. He wasn’t supposed to carry a weapon anymore after that issue with the Diez kid, but who the fuck was gonna take it from him?

Aw shit—he’d nicked himself. Right under the fucking nail too. A fat drip oozed down over knuckles already split and scabbed. He pinched it and shook it out over the edge of the cliff, and the drop plummeted for long moments down, down, toward the beach… and a body that was just washing in. _Score._

Kidd started to get up but… then it moved. Still alive. It was hauling itself up on shore.

He settled back down and waited for death to find its mark. He could help the process along himself, of course, but he didn’t need anymore blood in his clothes than there already was.

 

* * *

 

 

Law struggled toward the surface. He needed _air._

His body was wracked by the curse, like his flesh was being peeled off. Lanky human limbs were unfolding of their own accord from under his retreating seal Skin. He kicked desperately, his side and thigh gashed open and turning numb. Far above him the setting sun touched the stormy waves red. He wasn't going to make it… he was going to fucking drown _in his own waters_ like a shameful outcast… he was going to die like this, forced into his other form with his spotted Skin hanging useless around him…

He was fully human by the time he broke the surface, gasping and choking, water dripping from short black hair. He was injured, in pain, slipping in and out of consciousness, but he was alive. He floated limp for a while, waves surging over his head and getting in his mouth and nose. Gradually he became aware that he'd washed into shore.

Rocky shore. Cliff. Law dragged himself up the beach and took stock of himself.

The curse had saturated his leopard seal Skin, forcing him out of its protective folds. It was hanging around his shoulders, limp and cold, still clinging to the flesh along his back and shoulder but otherwise useless. He tried to pull it around him and change back, but he couldn't even feel it like he normally could. And recalling the words the witch had thrown at him like a dagger, it wasn't likely gonna improve on its own.

He sighed and tried not to give in to the panic rising in his throat. The rest of him was… well, probably fine. Probably would stop bleeding so much soon. The hole in his side hadn't penetrated too deeply but the long gash in his thigh was wide open, the skin and then a layer of puffy yellow fat parted like seafoam over the deep flesh below. It hadn’t hit the artery, which was good, but it smelled like death, sour and pungent. And he was getting dirt and pebbles in it. _Shit._

But it was probably fine.

Law stood and fought to stay steady as his blood pressure dropped and his vision blurred. He pulled his Skin the rest of the way off, folding it carefully and laying it atop a rock. Then he peeled off the belt and dark fabrics he wore on his lower half—leggings, breechclout, pouches. He'd kicked off his shoes as he struggled to shore. _Fuck..._ his sister had given those to him. He'd managed to hold onto the important stuff, though.

He limped back to the water and sank to his knees in the surf. The cold kept him conscious while he wiped dirt away from the wound, with a hand that definitely wasn't shaking.

“Should I assume you've failed at your task, then?”

Law looked sideways at the tall man perched on a boulder next to him. His clothing was the same style as Law’s: black cloth to the waist, leaving bare a dark, muscular chest and arms. His feathered cormorant Skin hung off human shoulders, but his eyes kept their beady avian sharpness.

“Fuck off, Vergo,” Law turned back to his wounds.

“You've been warned about taking that attitude with your elders.”

“Fuck off, Vergo _sir.”_

“Answer the question, Law.”

“I didn't fail.”

“Where is it then.”

“Pouch.” Law gestured to his clothes and Skin back on the beach, without looking up.

Vergo leapt over smoothly to the shore. Law scowled and ignored him… until he felt the cool edge of a blade being pressed under his jaw. The one he’d just retrieved from the witch’s undersea lodge.

His spine stiffened. “I brought the right one, I swear. Black blade, mirror edge, like Doffy said.”

“Yes yes, I can see that. I also see you've picked up a little something for yourself from the sea bitch’s collections.”

“They were just sitting there…” Law mumbled.

“These trinkets,” Vergo dangled one of the hammered copper bracelets in front of Law’s eyes, “could have cost the entire mission. They may yet cost your life. Look at you.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It’s deep. It’ll fester. Do you know what that means?”

Law didn’t answer and Vergo growled.

“It _means_ that Doffy’s forces are likely to be weakened by one. That I’ll have to tell him his favourite student is rotting on a beach, unable to return to the Family. This is why Doffy should never trust such sensitive matters to children—”

“I’m NOT a fucking child—”

“Shut up.” The blade pressed against his skin. “You let some pretty nothings endanger Doffy’s goals. That how you repay his kindness? With weakness?”

Inwardly Law was cringing with pain and shame, but he held his composure carefully. This was a test. He felt the blade easily part skin, a long slice down the length of his jaw from chin to ear. It felt like it was searing him, almost unbearable, but he didn’t react. A bead of blood trailed over his jutting collarbone and dripped into the water.

“No answer?” Vergo pulled it along steadily.

“Ngh… guh.”

“Had enough?”

Silence.

Abruptly, the blade withdrew and Law heard it jangling among the bracelets in his shoulder pouch.

“You can’t swim like this. Should I tell Doffy that you’re awaiting rescue?”

“No! No. Fuck.” Law avoided the temptation to put a hand to the cut on his neck. He sure as hell wasn’t gonna bring up the cursed Skin at this point. “Don’t tell him where I am. I don’t need anyone’s help. Just tell him I’ll be back in seven days. I’ll be healed by then.”

“Will you, though?”

“I’ll be back in seven days, or… or I won’t be back all.”

The cormorant grunted and straightened. Law didn’t look up. He focused in silence on the red trickle still drifting up from his thigh. Less now, but still oozing.

He felt a hand on his head. “Return to us, Law.”

“I will.”

“We don’t want to lose you. But we won’t abide weakness.” Vergo twisted his skin over and around himself, folding up into it like a swirl of leaves. The cormorant took off north up the coast, riding the last updrafts rising from cooling cliffs as the sun dipped below the waves.

Law slumped against the boulder and closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

Law dozed in the cooling water for some time, searching in his mind for the clever ways his selkie father (now long dead) had taught him to close and care for wounds. Pack the gap with… what? Feed it with which crushed root? All those memories were murky and incomplete, though. Everything from that time was so murky.

He jerked awake just as the sky was darkening, senses telling him something was wrong. Well, everything _was_ wrong. He needed to get out of the water. He shook himself and splashed water on his face and neck.

“Some friend. Leaving you to die, huh.”

A grinning man was sitting on the boulder now instead of Vergo. Or… _boy,_ on second glance. Human. He wore wool trousers and tunic over a long, angular body, fitting too tight at the shoulders. His pale skin was marred with half-healed scrapes and contusions, and red hair sticking out at odd angles.

“He's not my friend.” Law glared at him.

“No shit huh. Was it him that cut you up?”

_“No.”_

“Was too. I saw him do the one on your neck,” the human pointed.

“No, that was just… shut up. Go away.” Shit. Had he seen Vergo transform too?

The boy kicked water at Law. “Whatever. How about you come up to the beach and lemme see where he ‘didn’t’ cut ya, then. I keep bandages and stuff in a cave up there.”

“How about not. I'm good here.”

“What, you're gonna sit there til you bleed out in the water?”

“Guess so. Was nice meeting you, fuck off now.”

“If you come up I’ll make a fire and you can eat. I wanna talk to you.”

“Can’t. Busy bleeding.”

The red-haired boy shrugged and jumped stone to stone back to the receding shoreline. He climbed up onto a wide shelf and disappeared into a cave entrance just above the beach.

Law sighed. The tide was coming in, the water up to his chest and rising. He’d have to move… but no way was he going anywhere near that stupid cave or that human boy. He stood shakily. Seemed like his leg would support him, but only barely. He made his way up to where he’d left his clothes. At least those were dry. He tucked the long piece of cloth and three folded pouches back around himself, secured with his woven belt. Then the leggings with their ties, and… and…

His Skin was gone.

“Gonna come up?” The boy was sitting on the shelf, watching him.

“...Where is my Skin.”

He got a wide grin instead of a reply.

“Where _the fuck_ is my Skin,” Law hissed, dropping into a fighting stance.

The boy jumped down and strolled right up into Law’s face with casual arrogance. He was taller than Law, but he didn’t look any older, and no way would this hovel-dwelling human have had the level of training Law had had under Doffy. Law stepped up to meet him, but stumbled when he tried to put weight on his leg.

The boy watched him fumble with vague amusement, then shot out a hand to grab his forearm. “You think you’re gonna fight me like that? You were passed out in the water for an hour. You’ll be dead in two days if I leave you alone.”

“Then I’ll fucking die,” Law snarled.

He caught the offending arm with a crouch and a turn, launching the boy over his back and laying him out on the rocks. The human yelped in surprise but recovered quickly, leaping up and bowling into Law. He knew how to throw his weight, for sure, but there was no plan or purpose in his movements. Untrained. They went down and Law quickly flipped them and gained the top.

He sat on top of his opponent, breathing hard, dark spots flickering in his vision. He blinked and swayed.

The boy watched him with a smirk. “You don’t actually wanna die, I can tell. You wanna go back to the sea. And I have your ‘Skin’…”

Law punched him in the face with a howl.

It was a poor blow, drained of blood as he was, but it clipped the boy's lip against his teeth and made rage suddenly glare on his face. The human threw a fist back and caught Law square in the jaw. And another. Law slumped as his vision blackened, and the boy threw him off and scrambled up. He stood over the wavering selkie and grabbed his arm again. Law braced himself for a finishing blow.

But the boy just slung Law’s arm around his neck and picked him up with ease.

“Cave. Let's go.”

“I’ll fuckin kill you,” Law threatened, trying to clear his head and shove away.

That only seemed to endear him to the strange human. His rage had faded as quickly as it had come, and he was grinning again. “Sounds like a better plan than dying.”

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd built the driftwood fire up until they could see each other in the falling darkness, then sat back on his heels to look at his captive. Or his rescue or whatever. ‘Guest.’ The selkie had finally let Kidd carry him up into the cave, but hadn’t moved or spoken since. His eyes never left Kidd, grey and critical.

“That cut is deep,” Kidd observed. His various wounds weren’t bleeding much anymore, mostly washed clean. But he could see deep flesh exposed in both the chest and thigh ones.

His guest grunted dismissively. Kidd went over to a jumble of chests piled to one side and rooted around in one. This cave was one of several up and down the cliffs where he’d hidden little stashes like this. It was tall enough to stand up in, and a crack stretching all the way up to the surface acted as a sort of natural chimney. It was furnished with flotsam he’d found washed up on the beach, and mats and blankets stolen from the village. He hid out down here whenever he needed to recover after a fight, or whenever he’d gotten sick of dealing with his fucking mother.

Kidd found what he was looking for, and pulled out a few strips of clean cloth. He dropped them next to the selkie and went about setting an iron kettle over the fire.

The selkie didn’t move to pick up the bandages. He just kept staring.

Kidd frowned. “Well, you gonna bind that?”

“I said I don’t need your help. And I sure as hell don’t need your cloth things.”

Kidd scoffed. He picked up the bandages again and knelt in front of him. “You haven’t had a wound like this before, have you.”

The selkie shuffled back away from him, but was cornered against the wall. “Fuck off.”

Kidd clambered after him and caught the fierce face in one hand, trapping him. “You’re a selkie, right? A shifter?”

The other sneered and didn’t reply.

He growled in frustration, _“Answer_ me.”

“Yes,” was the reluctant reply.

Kidd flashed a brief smile before a different look took over. “And I have your Skin. And that means you have to do what I tell you to, doesn’t it.”

More silence.

_“Answer.”_

“It does.”

“So, _hold still.”_

The selkie went still, but didn’t relax a bit. Tension tightened his shoulders, and his breath was fast and shallow.

Kidd slowly released the glaring face, and let his eyes travel down the rest of him. He couldn’t be much older than Kidd. Same sharp angles—a body only just past the gawky stages of adolescence. But definitely not scrawny, with lean muscles stretching subtly under deeply tan skin. His clothes were strange. Even stranger were the spiked ovals tattooed on his forearms. Kidd ran curious fingers over these designs and felt the other flinch.

Kidd looked up and the grey eyes were still watching him, the pupils huge, a deer waiting to bolt. But he remained still and didn’t protest.

Bolder, Kidd put a palm to the bare chest, feeling its rapid heartbeat and sudden rash of gooseflesh. He could fit the cradle of his thumb just perfectly against the curve of those ribs… He slid his hand down to the smooth dip of his flank as the panic patter sharpened. There was one wound there, just on the edge of the lowest rib. Kidd leaned close and examined it. Not terribly deep—ribs were good for deflecting blades—but still open and weeping clear fluid. That gaping gash on the selkie’s thigh, though, just above where the leggings ended… Kidd bit his lip as he evaluated it. It was a smooth, deep dip like a pouch opened up in the meat of him, with a mouth as long as Kidd’s hand.

The selkie had to be fresh from some battle or great exploit, to have combat abilities like that and be so badly wounded. Probably a trained fighter. But his tan skin was otherwise unmarred—not like Kidd’s scarred hide. God, he was flawless. And _skilled..._ He could’ve probably killed Kidd easily if he hadn’t already been injured. But now this dangerous creature was weakened, passive, left open—probably as much from blood loss as the compelling effects of the command.

Kidd felt a sudden rush of possessiveness. You could tell a shifter to do anything while you held their Skin. Kidd could keep him here, forever. Totally under his power…

His captive was clearly thinking the same thing. He tracked Kidd like he was still waiting for a blow to fall.

Kidd sighed. He pulled the injured leg out straight.

The selkie boy’s careful composure finally broke. “Don’t.”

“I’m not—”

 _“Don’t…”_ he said again, and hid his face in his hands.

Kidd stopped and waited for the hands to come down, but they didn’t, and he went about the task before him regardless.

After an interval of silence, a crack opened in the fingers. “The hell are you doing?” The selkie sounded annoyed now. The hands lowered.

“Binding this giant fuckin gash in your leg?” Kidd replied with matching irritation, tying a second strip of cloth below the first. The guy was just goddamn lucky the cut was on the vertical, so it could be bound easily and he wouldn’t have to be subjected to Kidd’s attempt at stitches. “If you don’t close it, it’ll get shit in it and rot and then you’ll have to cut the whole fuckin thing off.”

“Is this some stupid human bullshit?”

“I… guess? Why, what do you guys do to treat wounds?”

“I don’t know,” the boy seemed stunned out of his stubborn silence for the moment.

“Don’t you shifter guys have all sorts of healing magic or whatever?”

“My crew doesn’t have healers. Just fighters.” He watched Kidd tie a third and fourth strip around his thigh. “This isn’t necessary.”

“Yeah it is. Won’t heal right otherwise.”

The selkie picked at the finished wrappings. “It either heals or it doesn’t. Things take their course as they should and you just have to bear it.”

“Well this’ll nudge things toward ‘not dying’, anyway. Leave it alone once I’m done.”

The order made the selkie’s eyes snap back into wary hostility. He was quiet as Kidd finished binding his leg and wrapped a longer strip around his ribs. But he stopped Kidd before he could touch the slit along the underside of his jaw.

“Leave that.”

Kidd left it.

He fed the fire and put some chunks of dried meat into the kettle to rehydrate. The selkie refused to eat, predictably. Kidd ate a little but then felt bad. Sucked when you were hungry and people ate in front of you… He spilled his bowl back into the kettle and coughed. The selkie remained stoic.

They sat on the woven rush mat across from each other, staring, evaluating.

Eventually Kidd made a noise of exasperation and lay down, throwing a wool blanket at his guest. The selkie didn't move to accept it, but he lay down too, never taking his eyes off Kidd.

“What do you want?” his guest muttered, perplexed.

“I told you, I want to talk to you.”

“That can't be all you want. You took my Skin. You know what that means.”

Kidd knew. Captured shifter wives were the stuff of popular legend both in the old world and the new, prized for their unfailing obedience. The boy obviously wasn't wife material, so that particular tradition was out. But he was a warrior, so his capture implied another set of traditions as well—the rights of the victor over the defeated.

He was clearly expecting Kidd to fuck him. Keep him here to have whenever he wanted. What other use could a village kid have for a warm body?

It's not like the thought hadn't occurred to Kidd.

He reached out a hand to smooth over the bandaged chest once more. The taut stomach began to rise and hollow rapidly under the curve of sharply defined ribs—fear. And under that, defeat. The bent huddle of him suddenly reminded Kidd of all the other sad, decaying bodies that had ever washed up on his shore.

That's _not_ how Kidd wanted to see him.

He removed his hand and the selkie’s breathing gradually slowed. Kidd pillowed his head on his arm and instead contented himself with just looking at his marvelous find.

“Talk to me?” he sighed.

The selkie gave him a look like he'd just sprouted horns. “I’d sooner eat my fist.”

 _“Talk to me,”_ Kidd growled. An order.

The boy shook his head in irritation. “What the hell… Talk about what?”

“About how you got those wounds.”

“Tcchh. I got them from… being an idiot.” He looked away from Kidd toward the ceiling of the cave, and grimaced at the memory. “I was supposed to go and steal this special weapon from an enemy while my sisters provided a distraction. I had enough time to get the knife and get out, but I uh. Saw some other stuff that looked… useful.”

“What stuff?” Kidd was hooked.

“Well not useful, but. Nice? Stuff.”

“Weapons?”

“Just nevermind, okay?”

_“Tell me.”_

The selkie cast him a look of scathing derision at the order. “Copper. Bracelets.”

“Hah!” He had an eye for shiny things then. Kidd pressed for more. “So was this a rival warlord or something? With this weapon?”

“A witch. A shifter like us, but with a monstrous, many-armed Skin. Really powerful.”

“Huh.” That was fucking awesome. “But you got everything and got out anyway!”

“I wouldn't say I got ‘out.’ I'm here, after all,” his guest groused.

“Right,” Kidd couldn't help but grin. “Escaped the massively powerful witch, and got caught by some guy from the village.”

“Some fucking clueless child…” the selkie groaned irritably.

“I'm not a child, asshole.”

“Oh my god yes you are,” he spat, more at himself than at the boy next to him. “Probably some shitty landcrawler whorechild, I can just tell.”

“You can not. …Can you?”

“Doesn’t even know what to do with his captive. Idiot boy—”

Kidd’s mind seemed to skip and he found himself lashing out at the selkie, grabbing his face in a vice grip and snarling. “You _want_ me to fuck you?? Fucking take you apart and—”

He stopped himself short with a shudder, and made himself take two breaths.

The face opposite his wasn't wide-eyed and fearful this time. The selkie’s breath was calm, and his eyes skipped over Kidd's face like he was reading something.

“No. I don't want that,” he said, pushing Kidd’s hand aside. “And neither do you.”

Kidd backed off and hovered for a moment before laying himself back down with a grunt. He didn’t offer an apology and the selkie didn’t demand one. He just watched the human, the whites of his eyes and his bandages standing out in the deepening darkness. Kidd watched the ceiling.

“So what the hell _do_ you want?” the bandaged figure asked again.

“I want…” Kidd muttered into to the darkness, the dying fire casting weird shadows on the walls and making everything seem unreal. “Well, right now I want you to shut the fuck up and sleep and heal and whatever.”

The selkie gave a disbelieving snort and Kidd looked over in irritation.

 _“Shut the fuck up. Sleep. Heal,”_ he directed firmly, and watched while the wary eyes slowly closed and his breathing finally deepened.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mysterious fanart fairy had a whole moment with some reference pic of a cormorant deep-throating an entire fish and so here we are. This is Selkie Skin, I’m Ossicle, and I’m here for Law sassing wildlife


	2. Stay still

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One fucked up day in the life of Kidd. Law chills in a cave.
> 
> Chapter warnings: Graphic animal cruelty and death, two instances. Graphic violence, blood, etc.

 

Kidd lay watching the smooth, severe face, waiting for its eyes to open. _Steel grey,_ he thought.

A crowd of gulls set up a din outside the cave. The eyes cracked open and immediately sharpened into a piercing glare, and Kidd couldn’t help but grin. Definitely steely.

“Morning, beautiful,” he needled his captive.

“I’m gonna skin you in your sleep,” the other replied. A sulking selkie. The most perfect thing Kidd’d ever seen.

“That won’t get you your Skin back, though.”

The selkie heaved a sigh and Kidd smugly ignored him, rolling over to evaluate the contents of the kettle from last night. Smelled fine.

“You should eat some of this,” he invited his guest.

“You telling me what to do, stuckshape?”

“If I was telling you to do it, you’d know, cuz you’d have to do it. Right?”

“Guess so.” The grey eyes followed Kidd as he rose and dipped a crude wooden bowl into the kettle.

“Eat?” He offered it to the selkie.

“Yeah, no.”

“No?” Kidd sipped it himself, chewing some of the more leathery chunks. Seemed decent to him. “You prefer fish and like, drowned sailors I guess, huh.”

“I don’t eat sailors.”

“You won’t like this, then, it’s the guy who washed up, day before you did,” Kidd waved the bowl at him and got a disgusted look. “...haha, joke.”

The selkie shook his head at him. “What the fuck is happening?”

Kidd laughed to himself and studied the contents of the bowl. He thought of the selkie’s question the night before.

_What do you want?_

He didn’t fucking know, was the thing. He was kinda making this up as he went. Kidd was as surprised as anyone that he’d pulled the guy out of the water in the first place. He didn’t usually want people around—just their valuables. But this one, unconscious and bleeding in the water, had drawn Kidd’s eye as firmly as a flash of silver on a drowned man’s finger. It was curiosity that had brought Kidd down the cliff after the cormorant-shifter had left. Base _want_ that had invited him to consider the boy slumped against that boulder, damaged but perfect. Then the Skin, folded neatly on the shore… it was greed that had convinced him to take that. After that, he just didn’t fucking know.

And since self-reflection sucked, he wasn’t gonna worry about it too much. “Well, I gotta go check on shit at my place, I’ll be back later. I’ll just check your dressings before I go.”

“They’re fine. Great. Please fuck off.”

Kidd rolled his eyes at this and gulped down the rest of the stew-ish-thing. He grabbed fresh cloth from the chest and went to examine the selkie’s bandages.

“Nonono, fuck _right_ off,” he edged away and Kidd had to catch him. He thrashed.

“Stay fucking still,” Kidd ordered for the second time.

The selkie was compelled to stay still but not silent as Kidd replaced the dressing on his thigh and re-tied the knots. “I’d rather rot than let you patch me up just to have something to fuck. You think I’m gonna thank you for any of this?”

“I could tell you to thank me, couldn’t I,” Kidd threatened.

“I’ll bite my tongue off,” he threatened back. “And then I’ll skin you in your sleep.”

“Oh my god... Okay just don’t fucking damage yourself while I’m gone. Can you do that, mighty warrior?”

The selkie thumped his head back onto the mat and steamed silently at that inane order. Kidd tossed the bowl by the kettle and took off. He shook his head as he left the cave and found his usual steep path, but he was smiling as he climbed.

 

* * *

 

 

The smile didn’t last long. He’d taken the long way around the village to avoid exactly this kind of fucked up shit, but fucked up shit always found him.

Kidd stared at the small mass of grey fur tied to the boundary post with its own entrails. The flies were thick on it, and it wasn’t dripping anymore. Probably been there since last night. He hesitated, trying to decide if it’d be safer to cut it down and hide it or just… hurry along, hope no one had seen him pass. This shit always got pinned on him, and yeah, he usually deserved it or at least went with it, but he had other stuff on his mind right now.

He hesitated too long, and the rest of the equation found him. Idle village boys—the bastard rejects and shitstain second sons of their little community’s most upstanding families.

“You’re a sick fuck, you know that?” Bartolomeo mocked through long teeth.

The usual ringleader. A troublemaker barely better tolerated than Kidd himself, but he came from a large, high-status family and so was well protected. Unlike Kidd. And his loudmouth antics drew the other boys to him, especially when they’d all gotten tired of screwing sheep or whatever and wanted a fight. The shrimpy Diez kid, Drake, was trailing along behind them. And further down, the usual girls hovered, whispering.

So which of the little dipshits had gutted the cat?

He’d bet on the girls.

He could’ve probably outrun them, or ignored them til they got bored, but… “Your whore mom never tell you not to play with your food?” …this fucking harelip brat had a special talent for getting to him.

He flashed broken teeth, drawing his knife.

“You’re not supposed to have that!” A slender, blond boy accused. Imperious Cavendish, pretty as a girl. Always close to Bartolomeo’s side, spurring him on when he wasn’t fighting with him himself.

“Gonna take it off me?” Kidd challenged.

“Gonna take more’n that. Gonna take your balls off, whoreson.” Bratolomeo. So full of shit.

“Come get em, cuntmouth.”

The boys shoved each other toward him, mocking and calling threats but still hanging back for now.

“Catpiss cuntboy fuckhole freak,” Bartolomeo was calling and the rest parroted him. Like yipping dogs. Jeering crows. Fucking cowards.

He’d fucking kill them, all of them, carve their throats out, wrap them all around the post too…

They clamored and he paced.

I’d go on like this until they’d worked themselves up enough, and one of the pack got bold enough to take a shot. The first one never landed, but if the others were confident enough they’d swarm Kidd before he could properly deal with the first asshole.

Someone grabbed Drake from where he was slouching around at the back and threw him to the front of the howling pack.

“You fucking shit! Bege!”

In all the chaos, someone else shoved the unfortunate guy right at Kidd. Practically fucking giftwrapped. Kidd yoked an arm around Drake's throat and shoved the knife against his face.

“Kidd! Kidd, I wasn’t gonna do anything!”

“Drakeypuss, that's what makes you such a waste of fucking space.”

The pack’s clamoring reached a fever frenzy.

Kidd cut him and he screamed. A long slice down his cheek and across his chin, deep enough to make the blood stream over his face in a thick curtain. He shoved the frantic kid back into the swarm of boys, who all shouted and stumbled over each other trying to avoid getting blood on them. In the split-second opening, Kidd launched himself at Bartolomeo and took him to the ground before the rest of the pack recovered and piled on top.

His knife was gone. Someone kicked him in the face and blood streamed into his eye. There was a thrashing body below him, banging on his skull and shoulders, tearing at his sleeves, and Kidd’s fist cracking against cloth, dirt, flesh, razor teeth—

And then some cheap shit brained him with a fucking rock.

 

* * *

 

 

“...shit… breathing?...” “...fuckin blood all over…” “...my dad’ll…” “...someone gonna come by and…”

“You fuckin did it now, Booger Bege.”

“Saved your ass, you mean! Your face is all fucked up, look at you.”

“This is all Drake’s blood. He… sneezed on me.”

“I'm going home! This isn’t my fault.”

“Sure, fuckin run away, Booger.”

The voices swimming above him faded, the boys taking Bege’s lead and making themselves scarce once someone else had run first. Kidd raised himself up on a forearm and watched the blood pool under his face. Spots exploded behind his eyes at that movement alone.

There was suddenly a hand on his hair and he jumped, snatching it and squeezing.

A squeal and a shriek. Those two girls were looking at him with wide eyes. Boa’s daughters... he didn’t remember their names.

He gripped hard onto the arm of the braver one. “The fuck do you want.”

“Um!” she stammered.

“Did you really cut up that cat?” the other asked from behind a hand.

“Yeah, and I’m working my way up to little girls.” He shoved the one back and she tripped into the other. “Fuck off.”

They both tittered. He dragged himself up and tried to stand but… no, the world spun. He slumped down to sit on his feet, and took stock of the damage. No broken fingers or ribs this time. Not much damage except that fucker’s teeth on his knuckles and the couple of shots to his head. It had been a short fight in the end.

“Are you hurt bad?” the second girl asked breathlessly.

Kidd ignored her.

“Can I see?”

She got too close and Kidd growled, but they were bolder now. And they both knew that Kidd couldn’t discourage them with his usual violence, the way he could with the boys. They whispered back and forth. He grabbed at the first one by the arm again but she held her ground this time.

“If you don’t let us see, we’ll tell our mother that you attacked us,” she smirked. “And that Bartolomeo was only trying to defend us. Council will have you strung up like that cat if you start on ‘little girls.’”

Fuck. He snorted and looked away.

They grinned and leaned toward him. God, he hated them, even more than the boys. Hated their piercing little voices, the clumsy berry stains they applied to their lips. The grotesque, girlish softness of their arms and faces.

The older one put a hand to his head and parted the blood-soaked hair until the wide gash was exposed. The other pulled at his tunic until she could see the half-healed slice across his shoulder blade from the last time. “Looks all bruised. Feels hot. Doesn’t that mean it’s rotting? Should’ve got it sewed up.”

She prodded it with a sharp little finger and he flinched and snarled.

“Stay still this time,” the older one ordered.

Kidd stayed still and silent. They looked and touched, turning his blank face back and forth to count his new scars, until they got bored and followed the boys back down to the village.

He glared at the last pair of eyes left watching him.

“The fuck you staring at,’ he demanded of the cat.

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd tore the putrid thing down but left it there, stomping it into the dust until it was a purple bruise on the land in the middle of the crossroads. He scrubbed away most of the blood in the stream before he went home. Not perfect but he’d pass a quick glance. Further up the stream he passed Drake kneeling in the grass, also trying to scrub the blood from his tunic. The thing was white linen though, unlike Kidd’s dark wool. Fucking rich kid.

“Cold water and lye soap, pusspuss,” Kidd recommended mockingly. “Face too.”

Drake threw a rock at him, and Kidd gave a harsh laugh as he sauntered on by.

 

* * *

 

 

He stumped up to their little house on its hill above the village, making as much noise as he could. He laid atop the low stone wall out front and waited for the pathetic grunting inside to trail off. One of the men from the village wandered outside shortly after, sparing Kidd barely a glance before striding off, tucking in his shirt. Kidd spat after him and gave it another couple minutes before going inside.

His mother was sitting at the window, white petticoats gathered up around her, chemise hanging off one shoulder, teeth tight around the reed of her little stone pipe. She was sucking the smoke in one side of her mouth and puffing it out the other to curl around some wildflowers sitting in a jar. The girlish white underclothes were bit of a stretch, Kidd thought, but not because she was old or anything. Not even thirty yet. Nah, it was because there was no damn way Bellemere could be mistaken for the kind of sweet and proper lady who’d wear all that shit. The hair, for one thing: a warrior’s style she claimed to have picked up in her seafaring, with close cropped sides and a flowing crest down the center. It was red like Kidd's, but darker.

“The Captain himself,” she greeted her son with their private nickname. “Where ya been, hon. The cliff again?”

“Yeah,” Kidd went to brush past her, hoping to get a new shirt before she noticed the blood stains.

“Ey. Where’s my kiss.” Kidd backed up and went for a kiss over her shoulder but she caught his ear and dragged him into a chair with a grin. “Oooh no, Captain Kidd. Let's see the damage.”

“It's whatever. Minor shit.” Kidd muttered, kicking at the table legs.

“Mmhm,” she mused, evaluating the sizable goose egg and grinning gash atop his head. She clucked her tongue and pulled her sewing kit toward her. “You need stitches, my love. God, if you'd been a girl, I woulda only had to deal with blood on the sheets once a month.”

“I'm not a fuckin girl and I don't need fuckin stitches,” Kidd pushed away from the table but his mother grabbed his wrist and pulled him back.

“Sit the fuck down.”

He thumped back into the chair, but felt his temper start to build in his chest.

Belle tapped the spent pipe bowl out. “You know if you didn't go around with such a fucking chip on your shoulder maybe they'd leave you alone.”

Kidd's hackles went up. “That what they used to tell you?”

“Watch it. I'm saying you have better shit to do than fight every fuckhead in the village and then hide out under the cliff. I need you home, Kidd.”

Kidd grit his teeth and avoided her eyes. He would come home more, but he hated to drag himself in all torn up and needy. The rush of guilt glued him to the spot, but made him all the angrier for it.

“What, you need my help with your clients?”

“Don't be a shit. You know I do.”

“I bet.”

“Shut up. They don't get as rough if they know you're around. And someone needs to watch the girls—I'm lucky they were asleep this time.”

“And maybe you can sell my ass to the ones bored of playin nice for pussy, huh.”

She slapped him, hard.

They sat in silence for a very long moment.

“They ask, don't they,” Kidd said quietly. They did—he heard them sometimes, suggesting things to her that made his stomach drop out. He never told her about the ones who approached him on his own.

Belle made a choked little sob sound into her hand and all Kidd’s anger left him, replaced by dull tiredness. He put a hand over hers on the table.

“Shitass Kidd,” she complained, but rubbed her eyes and forced a smile onto her face. “Just lemme give you the goddamn stitches.”

He sat still while the needle fed coarse thread through the lips of the wound and tugged it shut. Four little knots. They were crude—she was no great hand at sewing—but they did the job.

He rubbed at it and she scolded him, “Don't get your shitty fingers all over it, your head’ll rot off.”

“It’s already had your shitty fingers all over it, though.”

She gave him an affectionate smack upside the head. They shared another bowl of tobacco in silence, blowing smoke over the flowers brought by her more romance-inclined callers. Little cries from the next room signalled an end to the rare quiet moment.

“Go get your sisters and I'll feed em. Go on.”

Kidd slouched into the bedroom and found Nojiko already sitting up and sucking her fingers serenely, with Nami kicking up a damn fuss. Belle liked to say that red-headed Nami was Kidd’s little demon double, and that dark-haired Nojiko was some strangely angelic changeling. He scooped up both, clamping Nami under his arm to stop her wriggling. They’d only seen one winter—still wobbly little potatoes all cheeks and chub.

He deposited Nami in Belle’s lap first, and held Nojiko to wait her turn. Nami latched onto the offered nipple and calmed, though she was still grabbing and pinching with her little nails, judging by Belle’s occasional curses.

Nojiko just sucked her fist and regarded Kidd solemnly.

“The fuck you staring at,” he questioned the serene potato, and Belle snorted.

Kidd let Nojiko pull his hair and tried not to wonder how old the girls would be before the vultures started circling them too. Other kids. Men. Whispering and testing, testing for an opening. But it'd be different for them—they'd have each other, and they'd have him. And Bellemere… she’d probably stick around for at least another year or two, before the sea started calling again and she just up and disappeared from their lives for months, years. Forever, maybe.

He used to beg her to take him with her, but he can't stand to hear anymore how much better life is right here.

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd piled wood and carried water and whatever else he'd neglected to do when he'd stormed off the previous day. He stayed until it was getting dark and the girls were sleeping peacefully... and things were getting tense with his mother again. He left and she didn't say anything.

He took an even more roundabout route past the village to the cliff this time, detouring to break into a certain shack on the way.

But fucked up shit still found him, just like it always did. This time he smelled the animal before he saw it—blood and bile. The cat killer himself was perched astride a low stone wall at the edge of the wealthy Kizaru clan’s property. It wasn’t any of the boys from before… it was the Kizaru patriarch’s second son, and his least favorite, by all accounts. An unnamed bastard with eyes so pale they were milky, and a mane of long, matted blond hair. Maybe a couple years older than Kidd.

Kidd stopped with a disbelieving snort and watched him delicately pick apart the animal, right out in the open, not a single care in the world. It was a lamb this time, probably from his father's own herd.

The eerie eyes looked the newcomer over without expression. He seemed to decide Kidd wasn’t of any note, and went back to pulling guts. And he was right—Kidd wasn’t of note. Who the fuck was Kidd going to tell that he wasn’t the one tearing up small animals? Who’d take his word over that of a Kizaru son, however fucking crazy?

No one.

Kidd watched for a while, then rolled his eyes heavily—less at the cat killer than at his own fucking LIFE—and stalked on down the path to the cliff.

 

* * *

 

 

He was gonna set the whole cunting place on fire some day very soon.

 

* * *

 

 He climbed back into the cave to find a selkie as sulky as he’d left him.

“Welcome back. I’m gonna pull the rest of your teeth outta your head first chance I get.”

“You’re amazing,” Kidd had to grin. Arson faded from his mind.

He went to sit on the mat next to him, keeping back just far enough that his captive’s shoulders stayed relaxed and his breathing normal. He passed the selkie the package of stuff he’d stolen from the shack on the way. “Um. I thought you might like this better than the stew thing.”

The selkie opened it, smelled it, then blew out a long breath. Kidd could hear his stomach growling loudly.

“Yeah,” he said at last, looking over at Kidd but not meeting his eyes. “Um. Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

“Still gonna pull your teeth out.”

“Kay.”

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a wise, fancy lady once said, nothing is crueler than children who come from good homes. 
> 
> Bellemere is kinda dysfunctional, but I LOVE her. Badass punk af single mom
> 
> Art by mysterious anonymous fanart fairy -- Kidd with baby potato sisters Nojiko and Nami (confined to cradle and mad about it)


	3. How not to snare a shifter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings, just a quick little chapter with an idea I had that made me laugh. I swear this is a serious fic and I can take things seriously
> 
> Actually, maybe warning for unnamed idiot death. But funny! But death.

 

The ‘smoke’ part of ‘smoked fish’ seemed to really get the selkie. “How the fuck d’you get the fire in it?”

Kidd shrugged. “You put it in a box and put the fire under it and… I dunno? Do you guys seriously not have fire?”

“Shut up. We can have fire if we want. We just don’t.”

“As if.” Kidd watched his captive flake pieces off the darkened mackerel fillets and shove them into his mouth. He sucked on the rubbery skin until it was free of its salt and smoke taste and then ate that too. He devoured all of them like this, one after the other.

“Fire is bullshit,” the selkie argued with his mouth full. Kidd snorted. He stole one of the pieces of fish back and got a glare.

“Hey fuck you, I need to eat too,” Kidd defended himself. The selkie huffed and kept eating.

Kidd ate his slowly, looking into the fire and trying to think about nothing. His head hurt. His back too—that fucking girl was probably right about the infection there. And his knife was gone, probably taken by Bartolomeo. He started to wonder what kind of crime the boys would invent to pin on him, what kind of punishment the council would select. Usually just a caning on his hands and feet if there was no property damage. Or maybe he’d get lucky, and the boys would be too afraid of the minor punishments they’d face for fighting to even rat him out.

Ah hell, but that Diez kid… his face had been fucked up pretty good.

“You smell more like blood than you did before,” the selkie noted suddenly. “Yours and… other people's.”

Kidd grunted. “Yeah, well. Had to slaughter some bitches on the way.”

“Looks like they slaughtered you, though.”

Kidd threw the fish skin at him, and he caught it and shoved it in his mouth too. He kept looking at his captor, with a thoughtful expression that turned immediately to a glare when Kidd glanced over his way.

“The fuck you looking at.”

The selkie shook his head, his mouth still full, and Kidd scoffed and returned to staring into the fire.

“I’m not asking out of concern or anything, if you think you’re winning me over,” his captive shot at him.

“Didn’t think so.”

“I’m just noticing how bad you seem to be at combat.”

“It’s kinda tricky when there’s six of them,” Kidd growled. Then he grinned to himself. “Fucked up a couple faces good though.”

“Why don’t you get a group together and fuck up the whole bunch of them?”

Kidd laughed vaguely and turned to look at him again. “Why don’t you tell me more stuff about you instead.”

“Cuz I don't want to.”

“If you don’t, I’ll just make you do it anyway.”

The selkie threw a fish skin at him. “Is this how I'm to entertain you?”

“You’d rather get fucked?” Kidd got the wooden bowl thrown at him next.

“If that’s what you’re working up to anyway, I’d rather forgo the chatty getting-to-know-you shit.”

Kidd threw the wooden bowl back. “If I wanted a fuckhole, I wouldn’t bother chatting. I want you to talk to me about stuff. Anything.”

“No.”

_“Talk to me.”_

The selkie fixed him with a look that was quiet murder, and Kidd knew he was walking on thin fucking ice. That look told him there was a definite point where the selkie would rather kill him and take his chances Skinless than put up with this shit. Kidd decided he liked that look—much better than the lost, resigned look from earlier.

“Okay then,” the selkie grit out. “I’ll tell you what happened the last time a human tried to mess with a shifter in my family.”

“Perfect.”

“So. My younger sister—”

“And she’s also a selkie?” Kidd interrupted immediately.

“No. Uh, adoptive sister. She’s a…” he wavered for a moment. “Well, it doesn’t matter if you know this shit. She’s a murre shifter.”

“A bird? Raised by seals. Okay.” Kidd tried to imagine this.

“No. Uh… I’m adopted too, all my brothers and sisters are, but they’re, yeah, mostly fliers. Our Father’s a flier too…” The selkie trailed off for a minute, like it had just occurred to him that all this might be abnormal.

Kidd looked over at him. “A seal raised by birds.”

He waved this away like Kidd was a fly buzzing in his ear. “ANYway.”

The selkie talked, and Kidd let it all fill him up. Once he’d started, the selkie seemed to forget his stiff reticence, and relaxed into the colorful thread of the memory.

“So my sister has a thing for pretty human men. Pretty men who are dumb as sheep shit and think they can capture her if they gain her trust with lovey dovey stuff first. Beautiful young captive shifter wife, who wouldn't want that? Well, what these fucks don't realize is that, first of all, she falls in love like once a month so her family is prepared for that shit. And second of all, that she will literally do whatever a pretty boy tells her to do, so all they'd have to do is ask. But they think they're all clever, so they do this whole sneaky bit. I think it's some bullshit dominance thing actually, like they have to go through this whole battle of wit and daring to win the prize or it doesn't count."

"Anyway, they always end up going with the classic 'bathing maiden' scene. They get her to go bathe in the sea or some stream, and she pretends not to notice them watching through the foliage. Then while she's distracted they try to get their paws on her Skin so they can order her to do their laundry and enjoy missionary or whatever human marriage involves. _Rude._ As soon as that happens, whichever one of us is doing lookout has to swoop in and discourage the guy. Usually just emerging from the mist with a knife will do it.”

“Limpdicks,” Kidd condemned smugly.

“But this one guy… He does everything else as usual, she gets in the water and he grabs the Skin. But then he takes it and runs like hell.”

“Wait,” Kidd interrupted, “Leaving the… naked shifter girl…?”

“Yeah! So naked shifter girl is flouncing around in the water trying to be sexy, this jerkoff is running the other way, and I'm running after him. He runs to this cliff and climbs straight up. He gets to the top, sees me coming after him. And I shit you not, the guy takes a running leap off the cliff, wearing the Skin like a cape.”

Kidd snorted. “Does it work like that? Put on a murre Skin and you can fly?”

“Nnnope.”

“Hah! Fucking amazing.”

The selkie laughed too. “He plummets, splats. Pudding, heheh. And my sister is just there paddling around, and she misses the entire thing! By the time I get down again, our Father has arrived. Which is… bad. He does NOT allow us contact with outsiders, let alone humans. But he finds this whole scenario so fucking funny that he forgives us right away. Just laughs and laughs and laughs at this guy splattered on the ground, wrapped in the murre Skin. He made her wear the Skin home after too, all covered in her lover's blood…”

Kidd's laughter faltered a little. “He did?”

“Yeah… that was a little dark. Later it became clear that it wasn't so much the irony of the situation, or even its slapstick charm, but the whole 'splatted human’ dimension that our father found funny. Each time my sister’s taken up with a new lover since then, he's always shown up at some crucial moment, scooped the guy up, flown him way up high and dropped him. Splat. And every time, she swears she's gonna kill him for ‘ruining her life,’ but he seems to find that funny or cute or something and she constantly gets away with it.”

“Just kills em in front of her? And this is you guys' dad...” Kidd reflected.

The selkie wasn’t paying him any attention. “Ugh. If Doffy caught _me_ with a human, I'd get dropped on the rocks too… fuckin unfair. Anyway, moral is: don't try to catch a shifter bathing.”

“Like I did with you?”

“...what?”

Kidd lolled his head the selkie’s way and shot him a sly slip of grin. “I caught you bathing with your Skin on the shore.”

“That wasn't—! I was injured! In battle! I was cleaning my wounds and YOU—”

“Just sayin.” Kidd pillowed his hands behind his head and made a big show of indifference.

“... ...” The selkie ground his teeth.

“So your sister, huh.”

“Okay I'm done talking. Storytime is over. Go the fuck to sleep.”

 


	4. How to snare a shifter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Doffy. Violence level 'subtle' but fucked up, predatory/abusive parent, trauma-bonded Law

 

Law woke in the morning to find the human already up. He was sponging the dirt and grime off, and smoothing his red hair back under a strip of patterned black cloth that looked like it’d been underwater a while.

The human glanced over like he could feel the eye daggers flying. “Morning sunshine.”

“Morning. One of these days you're gonna wake up with your insides on the outside.”

“Big talk for a guy who was half dead a day ago.”

Law watched him pull on his woolen clothes again. “Where are you going.”

“Smithy. Supposed to be working there most days. My uncle gets pissy if I take off for more’n a few days at a time.” He paused to look down at the selkie still laid out on the mat. “You gonna let me check your dressings?”

“‘Let’ is a funny way to put it.”

“Hah.” The rude lout gave him an experimental prod with his foot. “You gonna submit to my brutal attempts to keep you breathing, then?”

“Nah.”

“Yeah figured.  _ Let me _ check your dressings.”

The human grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him over for examination and Law gave him a calm kick in the ear.

“Ow! What the fuck! I thought you had to let me check your thing if I told you to??”

“I am letting you. I'm just also breaking your face.”

“Don't break my face. Son of a bitch.”

Law spread his hands in mock submission.

The human grumbled while he pulled aside the knots. He looked at the wound in bewilderment. “It's already mostly closed up. You have healing power stuff after all?”

“No, I just heal a little faster than other people. Always have.”

“Yeah but this,” he poked the thick line of raised tissue, still red and crusted but definitely almost closed over. “This is what it’d look like for me after a week.”

Law shrugged. Wasn’t his fault that humans were weak, breakable, land-bound mud-suckers. “So you nursed the baby bird back to health, congrats. Gonna return my Skin and release me back into the wild?”

“Nah.”

“Thought not. Now that I’m not an invalid you can fuck me with a clear conscience.”

His captor rolled his eyes. “Yeah totally. Okay I'm gonna go forge some wedding shackles. Later.”

“My bride price is a knife big enough to penetrate your thick SKULL,” Law called after him.

As soon as he’d left, Law started emptying out one of his folded pouches, shaking feathers, flint and tinder into his hand.

“And if you take off somewhere just come back before dark, kay, birdie?” the human’s voice startled him, and Law threw the flint at the smirking head poking around the corner. It laughed and ducked out again.

* * *

 

 

The Skin wasn’t in the cave, or anywhere nearby. He’d looked and looked the day before, kicking the chests and screaming in frustration at the black stone walls when he couldn’t even detect a hair of it. 

Law sat on the beach for a long time after the human had left, twirling a feather in one hand and thinking. The sky was a dead shade of grey today and the wind was hard and cold… the seasons would turn soon. Ice would form and break and form and break and pile up on the shore, sea spray would freeze onto the cliffs, the summer birds would follow the warm air far away. And if the human had his way, Law would still be here, land-bound and immobile while the world cycled on without him.

Law considered the feather, long and brown-tipped—osprey. There was a feather or a fur tuft in his pouch for each member of the (mostly avian) Family. Law had sifted through them over and over before selecting that of his older sister, Monet; the only one of his adopted siblings skilled enough to help him, and crafty enough keep it from the older men. His younger sister Baby was more devoted to him, and sure as fuck owed him after all the times he’d kept lookout while she met some human lover. But she was erratic, distractible, and a truly terrible liar. Sugar was still practically a baby. Bellamy was a tattle-tale and a pompous fool. Buffalo was… an idiot, if easily bribed.

So, Monet. He could call her, she could fly through the village unnoticed and locate his Skin, could probably kill the human and his whole family without batting an eyelash. Proud, ruthless Monet. He’d owe her for the rest of his fucking life, of course, but at least he’d have a life.

But Vergo’s voice kept playing in his head:  _ weak, weak, WEAK. _

They’d find out, him and Doffy, always did. And though they probably wouldn’t kill him for flouting this test of will, they’d cast him out, and that was worse. 

It had never been like this while Cora was alive, never so uncompromising, but things were different now. Doffy was different.

Law put the feather away.

He let himself drift in his misery for a while longer, clutching wind-whipped hair in long fingers, before he shook himself out of it. He rose with a grimace and stripped off his clothing and bandages, wading into the water. Might as well fucking eat, right?

The water was cold, clear, calming. His wounds were healed enough that the salt water didn't sting so much. He sank into the waves with relief despite the awkwardness of human limbs against the strong surge of the waves. Spindly limbs, breakable wrists, bare, shivering hide.  _ Weak, weak, weak. _

* * *

 

 

Law re-emerged from the water wiping gore from his face. He felt better, his stomach full and limbs burning pleasantly with the effort of hunting in this form. He'd popped open his fucking chest wound again while swimming, but he almost relished the angry sting of it. It was split open along the seam, weeping copper into salt.

His Father was waiting for him.

The towering, grinning man was sitting casually on a boulder in the surging water. The last Donquixote, feared warlord and Father to their odd family of castaway shifters. He was dressed as usual in his southern finery, all soft linen and painted silk, white albatross Skin hanging around his shoulders. He had the copper bracelets in one hand. 

Law stopped in the waist-deep water, stark fear wrapping itself around his spine.

“Do you know how much I love seeing you like this?” Doffy smiled wide, leaving it unclear which part of the scene he meant.

“Doffy… I told Vergo that you shouldn't— that I don't—”

“I know, little one. That you don't need help. That you'll return by yourself in seven days or you won't return at all. So determined, my selkie. So  _ strong.” _

A thrill went through Law's thudding heart, half hope and half anxiety. Doffy held out a hand large enough to easily wrap around Law's skull, strong enough to crush it, and Law slowly approached. The warlord was so perfect, so powerful, his presence blotting out everything else in the world. The hand eased over his face, threaded through his hair. He kept himself from pulling back.

“But that's unnecessary now. You've passed the test. I'll take you home and you can complete your recovery safe at the keep with your brothers and sisters. They're all waiting.”

Home.

His family.

Law wanted that so much, and that's how he knew it was a lie. He was still being tested.

He swallowed. “I’m. I'm fine, I'll stay here seven days and heal on my own, to make up for almost botching the mission.”

Doffy's manic grin grew even wider. The albatross dangled the copper cuffs.

“Oh, little one, no, you don't need to perform any further penitence. I want to reward you. These lovely things—you wanted them, didn't you?”

Law shook his head.

“You did. You must have wanted them very badly.”

“It was just an impulse.”

“You must have wanted them even more than you wanted to follow my orders. More than you wanted to protect your Family.”

Law cringed. “No.”

“More than you wanted to stay with us. With me.”

“No! There’s nothing I want more than that.”

Doffy hmmed testily but seemed satisfied. A long finger eased the selkie's head up so their faces were almost brushing. The warlord was even more overwhelming up close like this… cold black eyes and a curling slash for a mouth, all full of white teeth. This was the part of the whole disciplinary ritual that Law was dreading most, far more than Vergo’s knife, but he kept his expression so, so, so carefully controlled.

“Law, close your eyes.” An order.

Law managed to keep his face blank, but he couldn’t make himself close his eyes. His heart was pumping panic through his veins. He stared up at the hungry Cheshire grin.

“What’s wrong?”

“Doffy, you... you promised, okay?”

“Close. Your eyes.”

Law closed his eyes and felt lips brush his, gently.

“Open.”

He opened his mouth and stayed perfectly still as a tongue pushed in to tangle with his. A hand fit itself around the back of his neck and stroked over the nape, but didn't venture elsewhere. Law waited, eyes screwed shut. 

Doffy murmured something else as he pulled away, and Law nodded at whatever it was. He glanced guiltily around at the cliffs behind them, like someone might have seen. 

“Good, you're so good.”

Abruptly the albatross was gone, and Law almost fell over, unbalanced. He glanced around again, shivered, and sloshed quickly toward the shore and his clothes. 

* * *

 

 

Law hurried down the beach in a daze. The sun was dropping orange and huge toward the horizon to his right. He was clothed but barefoot, rushing nowhere, a vague notion in his head to get away, go somewhere…

By the time he gathered his thoughts the sun was halfway below the horizon… on his left. His feet had turned him back around to bring him to the cave before dark, as the human had instructed. He made an angry noise to himself but let his feet carry him back. What else could he do?

On his wrists were the shiny copper cuffs. He dimly remembered Doffy fitting them onto him and then swirling up into the grey-white sky. Law ran his fingers over the smooth surfaces, hammer dips and folded edges glinting in the fading orange light. They suddenly felt like huge hands gripping around his wrists, clammy and constricting. He stopped and tore them off.

Shit. SHIT.

It had  _ never _ been like this while Cora was alive.

He was within sight of the cave, just rounding a point where the cliff loomed out over the beach and a large fallen rock made a little shelter. He rearranged the stones beneath it and stowed the cuffs there. Their fire-bright shine went under the black rocks and was extinguished. He left them there and tried to imagine that they were gone. But he still broke into a run halfway back to the cave, and it had nothing to do with the human's orders.

 


	5. Needle and knife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kidd attempts the comfort part of hurt+comfort but he's a fuckin mess and so am i
> 
> Warnings for minor violence

 

The human was already there when Law returned, just as the sky became dark.

“Good timing, honored guest,” he smirked from in front of a crackling fire.

“Yeah, uh.” Law couldn't think of a good threat this time. His brain felt foggy and his tongue slow. So he just went and sat on the mat and stared at the fire too.

The human seemed almost taken aback. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Law looked over in confusion, “I didn't say anything.”

“Yeah…” He looked sideways at Law for a moment but then shrugged. “Hey hey, so look at this, I've been working on a new project.”

Law wasn't sure how he was supposed to react to having a dagger waved in his eye by his unpredictable captor. It didn't seem like the human was trying to freak him out, but that's mostly the effect it was having.

He kept his face neutral. “It's a knife.”

“Uh  _ yeah _ it's a fuckin knife. I made it. If I finish a bunch of fuckin ox shoes and whatever each day, my uncle lets me make other stuff. So this is what I've been working on for the past few weeks. That dickbag Bartolomeo took my last dagger, but that one was just a test run, fulla weak joins and scale. THIS is the real thing.”

He seemed to be waiting for more of a response. Law looked at it.

“It's a very long knife.”

“A dirk, yeah.” The human was smiling and turning it over and over so the firelight caught its long, tapered edge. It was a strange sort of metal, almost shimmering. “I got the steel from two other knives I took off some weak little shits. Fuckers tried to come at me with a dog, haha… You see the pattern like waves? I reforged the two knives together, just banged em out flat and then fold and hammer and fold and hammer and it comes out like this.”

“...interesting.”

“Here, wanna hold it? I got it perfectly balanced this time, too.”

Law looked at the knife hilt being held out to him. Under his blank malaise, warning bells were starting to go off. The situation started to make sense: It was a test. A game. He held himself perfectly still, keeping his eyes on the dirk and away from his captor, so as not to offer any challenge. 

Eventually the dirk lowered. “What's wrong.”

_ Shit. _ Law had responded incorrectly after all. “Nothing's wrong.”

The redhead’s gaze raked over him again, evaluating, and Law felt his hackles rising… and then fading. What the fuck did it matter? He sat still and kept his face blank, letting his captor get his eyeful. The guy could take whatever he wanted, and would, eventually.

“Your thing infected after all? You feverish?” the human questioned him.

“No? It's still fine.”

“Where's your bandages? Holy shit, the one on your chest is fucking popped open, what were you doing?”

Law looked down at the gaping hole on his lower rib. It wasn't bleeding, but it was open and throbbing. Now that he was aware of it, it actually hurt like hell.

“Oh. Fishing.”

“Idiot, you're fucking wounded!”

“Yeah but I was also fucking hungry,” Law let a sliver of anger leak out.

“You gonna let me see?”

Law shook his head and shrugged. Which wasn't really an answer either way. But he didn't react when the human maneuvered him roughly into a position where he could see his chest.

This gave the other pause again. “Not gonna kick me?”

“You told me not to.”

“Yeah but...” He chewed his cheek. Didn't seem to know how to put his protest to words. He held the selkie's arm and considered the wound—an eyeless socket staring blankly from the center of him.

“It'll close on its own,” Law mumbled. “Or… won't. Whatever.”

“That whole 'leave it to fate’ thing is really pissing me off,” his captor growled.

“Sorry.”

This seemed to irk the human further. He shoved Law back so he had to catch himself against the hard stone. “Will you shut up with that shit?”

That got a dark laugh and brief flash of a sinister glare from the selkie. “I’d be forced to if you gave the order. So just tell me to.  _ Make me _ like the victor should.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Ugh. You won't, though. You always talk in half-suggestions and questions. Like a fucking beaten child.”

“I… what??”

“Like a kicked dog,” Law needled him.

That got to him. “I’d fucking love to make you shut up right now.” He was almost on top of Law again, lips rolled back over jagged teeth in a snarl.

“So make me. Give me an order.”

_ “Fight me.” _ Another shove.

“Hah.” Law obeyed, but passively. He braced himself and shoved the human back with his feet, but didn't follow it up with an attack. The other bounded back and barreled into him, bringing them both to the floor hard enough that their teeth rattled. Law let him.

“No, really fight me. Fight back! Fuck!”

Law growled in irritation and threw him off, as ordered. The human boy slammed into the wall and rolled, but Law caught him, and gave him a blow to the solar plexus that should have winded him. He recovered, and slammed Law to the ground again. Having obeyed the last command just enough to count, Law went limp. He stared up at the scarred face with a hard gaze, but didn't move to throw him off again. He felt bitter; breakable. It didn't matter if he fought or not, the result would be the same.

“So that's what you want after all, huh? You want me to struggle so you can overcome me?”

_ “No.” _ The human gave him a little shake.

“Yeah, you want me to fight and lose. Just another game. Bathing on the beach.”

“I want you to fucking fight and fucking… win? Escape?? I dunno!”

Law’s brain stuttered to a stop. “You…  _ want _ me to escape?”

“Well, no, but… I mean, I want to keep you, but? Like…” The human was sitting on top of the selkie, hands clamped around his shoulders, tall and threatening. But his expression was almost pleading. “I dunno,” he said again.

Law raised himself up on his elbows and tried pushing the gripping hands off his shoulders. “Let go.”

They fell away without resistance.

“Get off me.”

The human breathed out heavily, and moved back.

Law sat up and hugged his knees. “Give me my Skin back.”

The human gazed at him, saying nothing.

Law pushed, “I have a family. I have seven days to return to them or they'll consider me dead. You understand? If I stay here I’ll lose everything.” He left out the part about the curse.

“Fuck… Okay. Yes.”

“... wait, really? Just. Just like that?”

The redheaded boy shrugged, almost seeming embarrassed. “I was gonna give it back eventually anyway. The fuck am I gonna do with a captive selkie?”

“...”

“But look. Can you let me have a few days?"

“A few days…?”

"Yeah. Um. Like, a few days with you. Nothing fucked up, just you being around.” The human sat up straight again, itching at his palms. “How about you stay here for the full seven days, and I'll give you the Skin back then? After you've healed.”

“If I heal at all,” Law muttered darkly, not ready to believe it all. But his anxiety was fading, his head clearing. 

Law rested his chin in his palm and reconsidered his captor or whatever. With the threat of lifelong captivity lifted, Law could evaluate him more objectively. Could see how young he was, all tall and broad-shouldered but still awkward and unsure in his own body. He carried himself with exaggerated aggression—a defensive trait, it occurred to Law. And his many scars said that his hard edges had been well earned. But for gods' sake, he'd fucking handed his captive a blade, and it hadn't been a game. Like he'd forgotten their situation altogether, or didn't understand it to begin with. How could someone so clearly well-versed in violence be so… guileless? He hadn't even tried to ransom a favor or a gift out of Law. He'd only asked for time. A few days, when he'd had all of Law’s life to bargain with.

…fucking idiot boy.

“What are you doing now.” Law asked with exasperation, watching the human root around in a chest.

“Gotta close the fuckin crater in your chest.”

“With what?”

The human had found what he was looking for and returned to sit back on the mat in front of Law. In his hand was… an awl? Or some really tiny knife?

“Whoa, um.”

“Okay just hold st—”

Law caught him firmly by the wrist. “Wait.”

The human stopped and glared.

Law held up a finger. “First. Do not tell me what to do. I talk and sleep and sit still or don't whenever the fuck I want.”

“Fine, asshole.”

He put up a second finger. “Do not touch me without my sayso.” A third finger. “Return my Skin on the seventh day. And no bullshit about it.”

“Okay but YOU,” the human stuck a finger in his face and Law swatted it aside with a growl. “You gotta let me treat your injuries so they'll actually heal…”

“With that tiny fucking mouse dagger? Fuck that.”

“It's a needle for stitches and YES.” He held up a second finger, “You can do whatever during the day but I want you back here each night.”

“Sure. Great. Idiot.”

“And,” he growled, holding out a thumb and two fingers, “You don't. Call me. An idiot.”

They evaluated each other for a moment.

Law finally shrugged like all this was nothing, trying to keep himself from prematurely fist-pumping or jumping around. The human might still go back on his word. “Okay deal. And then on the seventh day I'll cut off your nose and ears with your own knife and swim off into the sunset.”

The human actually laughed at that, and the tension in the air cleared like clouds after a summer storm.

“Stitches first though. You'll wanna be lying down for this,” he suggested.

Law eyed the needle nervously but lay back on the mat. “Yeah, okay then. Commence the tiny knife torture.”

“Oh my god it's not that bad. I get stitches all the time. See?” The human indicated an ugly mass on the top of his head.

“Holy shit. It's worse than your face.” Law got a punch in the arm.

“Okay. Look, I just thread the needle, and then sew you up like a shirt or something.”

“I've never sewn a shirt.”

“Uh…” he considered Law’s shirtless state. “Or leggings or whatever.”

“My sister sews my clothes.” Law cast a worried look at the needle that the human was still trying to thread. “And clothes generally don't… feel things? So it's a little different.”

“It's okay, it doesn't hurt that much.”

“I'm not afraid or anything.”

“Right.” He'd gotten the thread through the eye of the thing, finally. He put a hand to Law's chest and Law couldn't help but flinch. “Hey, I'm not gonna do anything bad.”

“I know. Shut up.”

The human paused. “How about you like, talk about something. For distraction.”

“Don't really wanna entertain you right now.”

“It’s not for me, it's just to keep your mind off the needle thing, since you're so freaked out about it. You could talk about like, another battle or adventure or cool thing y—”

“YOU fuckin talk.”

The human paused. “You don't wanna hear about me.”

Law crossed his arms behind his head. “Yeah I do. Tell me something about you. To distract me.”

“I’ll make you feel worse,” he laughed kinda nervously. “Or I'll bore you.”

“Tell me about…” Law considered him and the redhead suddenly seemed to avoid his eye. “The first time you got stitched up.”

“Shit. Uh, okay.” He sighed and started sewing. The needle made its first puncture and it wasn't too bad—it was the crude string threading through the skin that was weird. Law shifted uncomfortably and tried to focus on listening. “Okay this is maybe a funny story? A little like your cliff-diving wannabe-shifter story.”

“Oh my god did you throw yourself off a cliff? Perfect.”

“Didn't get that far but yeah, that was probably the plan.”

“Probably?” Law snorted.

Eustass jabbed him a second time. Law shifted again—that one had been deeper. Maybe getting the human to think of something else while he worked hadn't been the best idea. 

“I don't actually remember it, too young. But my aunt reminds me about it all the fucking time. It was right after my mom took off seafaring for the millionth time. I was… six? She left me with my aunt and uncle, and I guess I wanted to follow her really bad. I dunno. Don't remember, like I said. I mean, I remember her being gone most of the time, and mostly I didn't care but—”

“Okay I also don't care. Tell me about you diving off a cliff.”

“Yeah.” The human paused and found his place again. “So I'd been sneaking out of my uncle's house and trying to find my mom for a while, and I guess they'd finally gotten it across to me that she was gone to sea. I didn't know what ships were, I definitely couldn't swim. But I had this raven carcass, and I guess the idea just got into my head—”

“You guys eat ravens? Gross, and also really bad luck.” 

Eustass hand-waved that away. “Oh we don't fuckin eat em. My aunt says I killed it but I dunno. There's always just dead animals around the village and I'm usually blamed for it, but it's totally not me—”

“Oookay.” Law didn't believe him either. “But what, you tried to wear it? And then jumped off a cliff?”

“Nono, I didn't actually jump off a damn cliff. I dunno what my plan was but I think I was trying to cut off my arms and put on wings.”

“...what? Ow.” Eustass had poked too deep again and Law punched his arm. 

“Ow. Sorry. But yeah I was kind of a dumb kid. Funny, right? My aunt heard me screaming and screaming somewhere and went looking. She says she found the butchered raven first, then its wings, then the knife, and then just a trail of blood splatter like—”

“Okay NO.” Law stopped things.

“No?”

“No more story. Too fucked up. I have a sister that age.”

Eustass stopped sewing and huffed, “Too fucked up?? In your story a guy got splatted! And obviously I didn't manage to take my arm off, just a little—”

“Stop. Stop.”

After a stretch of sullen silence, the human sliced off the last thread and grunted. Law regarded the completed stitches critically. They were ugly as fuck, all uneven, but the wound was closed. Another length of cloth around his chest finished it off.

Law sighed and stretched. “My thanks, heroic human.”

The human grunted again, apparently still stung that Law hadn't found his weird story amusing. “Whatever, sulky selkie.”

“Okay that's a shitty name. Don't call me that.”

“What's your name, then.”

Law turned his critical gaze on the human. “I'm not fucking telling you that. Names are power, and you already have too much over me.”

“Hah, so I shouldn't tell you mine either, huh.”

“No, you shouldn't.” Law let one corner of his mouth angle up.

The human thought, and then grinned. “I'm gonna call you Trafalgar, if you're not gonna tell me something better.”

“What's that mean.”

The human laughed. “Dunno. It was stamped on some crates that washed up last storm. I got a bunch of Indian sugar salvaged outta those, it was the best!”

“You’re naming me after flotsam. Great. Well I'll call you… Eustass. After a human troublemaker who got his head separated from the rest of him.” The selkie grinned with all of his teeth showing.

“The name of a deadman,” Eustass mused. “Works for me.” He tossed Law a blanket.

Law caught it and lay down on his side of the mat, suddenly exhausted but still wide awake. The prospect of freedom kept him buzzing.

The human stayed sitting up, looking uncertain. “Okay so we good?”

“Heh. Yeah we're good. As long as you stick to the agreement,” Law emphasized again with an edge of severity that was totally lost on ‘Eustass.’

“Great!” Eustass leaned forward. “Um. So wanna try my dirk now?”

“I do not wanna try your dirk, no.”

“Just to see how it compares to others you've handled? You seem like you probably wielded lots before.”

“Not really. But I imagine one oversize dagger is much like another.”

“Not even! Look, if you just hold this one, it has a nice heft to it. Fits in the hand. See?”

“Oh my god Eustass, keep your dirk to yourself.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My whole concept is baby Kidd tying up baby Law and like, petting his hair and showing him all his fav toys while Law freaks out cuz this psycho is showing off his torture implements omg, but it’s just that Kidd doesn't know how to have friends


	6. Dreaming and waking I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A super brief chapter as I lie awake at 3am feverish and fulla drugs. Fucking? Nooo have some mystical bullshit.
> 
> No warnings, just Kidd and Law hurting and dreaming of the sea

 

Kidd couldn't remember the last time he’d wanted something more than to tear apart every last motherfucker he'd ever met. But somehow that familiar, wrenching burn receded to a distant inner rumble as he lay across from Trafalgar and closed his eyes.

He slept, aware but not caring that the selkie was watching him with a new intensity.

Kidd dreamed that a pale-haired, pale-eyed boy was seeing him off from a pier lined with bodies—animal and human both. Kidd stepped into a waiting ship and the boy cut the line. He drifted off to sea as everything started to burn behind him. He didn't turn around but he knew that the village, his house, his family were all wrapped in flame, crumbling into ash.

But he was free. Whatever that meant.

The ship took him under the sea, speeding along an endless subsurface plain. Peaceful; perfectly peaceful. Nothing but dim, eerie light and waving seagrass arms. Nothing but him and the darkening ocean floor, forever.

 

* * *

 

Law couldn't remember the last time he’d wanted… anything. Really wanted. Even the day before, the idea of freedom had seemed like an elaborate game with no way to win. Freedom was like that—not real, not like duty and family were real. A gaudy bauble dangled before his eyes for no other reason than to teach him compliance. But now he could taste it like blood on the air. And it wasn't Doffy dangling the prize this time. It was this… boy. This utterly unguarded boy asleep beside him. It wasn't Doffy that came to mind when Law thought of his freedom, either. It wasn't anything yet, except a sense of possibility and immanence.

Law watched the boy he'd named Eustass, letting his eye catch on the old scar that wrapped halfway around the human’s arm, above the elbow. From trying to cut his own arm off, if that bird-wing story had been true. The selkie thought idly of the oily texture of blood on feathers, and without being aware of it, slipped into dream between one thought and the next.

He dreamed that he heard a deep call from outside the cave. A shifter’s voice, of a kind and a tongue that he couldn't place, though he understood it. He sat bolt upright and listened.

It said,  _ you're bleeding. _

He looked down at his chest and the wound was open again, the stitches coming undone and trailing a long black thread away from him, out of the cave and into the darkness. He rose and followed it. The thread led him down to the edge of an ocean that was almost black. It trailed into the murky depths and disappeared. He started to pull on it. There was a weight on the other end, something tied to it? He pulled harder.

Something on the other end pulled back.

Law felt panic start to grip him. He pulled back from the edge but the line had gone taut and he was tethered by his stitches. He grabbed the thread and yanked, trying to snap it, pull it loose from his chest, get away.

_ You're bleeding. _

There was a shape rising fast toward him through the water, massive and threatening, following the thread. The stitches finally tore out, and blood poured from him into the sea, staining it, turning every drop of it thick and red.

_ We almost thought you'd forgotten how. _

 

* * *

 

Law jerked awake with his heart pounding. The barest hint of dawn lit the cave. His stitches… were intact. He was intact. He was still in the cave, and the human was still next to him.

Law snorted to himself and dropped back onto the mat. He slipped into a restless dream where he went looking for the unknown voice over endless rocky beaches, but couldn't find it anymore.

 

* * *

 

The sun rose somewhere behind the cliff. Light wandered into the cave and over two sleeping forms, curled like cats against the night chill. One dreaming of solace and the other of power.

 


	7. Lifeline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Law makes a call.
> 
> I dunno. I’m having sib feelings today. This is mostly a setup chapter—it’s the NEXT couple that I’m really excited about.
> 
> No warnings.

 

Kidd woke exhausted and uneasy. He kept his eyes closed, trying to hold onto the fading dream of the deep, quiet ocean floor… But it was gone. He cracked open his eyes. 

The selkie was watching him again, closer than he'd been last night. He startled and looked away when he saw Kidd's eyes open, though.

“Morning, Trafalgar, Sulky Selkie,” Kidd greeted him.

Trafalgar scoffed and sat up. “Morning, Eustass, Not-Yet-Headless. I'm gonna correct that for you sometime soon.”

“Haha… You'd be doing me a favor, honestly…” Kidd muttered. He hauled himself up, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. He’d been ignoring it, hoping it’d go away, but he’d probably have to deal with that shit soon. He was all chills and clammy skin, and he’d seen what could happen once things got past that stage.

“Why do you smell bad?” Trafalgar asked abruptly.

“Don’t be fuckin rude,” Kidd threw his blanket at the selkie.

“No, I mean, like bad blood. Like sickness,” he explained from under the blanket, muffled.

Kidd ignored this and went to build a fire from their dwindling supply of driftwood.

The selkie pulled at the blanket so it was wrapped around him, and watched Kidd with his usual unsettling gaze. “Um, are you going someplace today again?”

“Yeah, smithy. Village. Why?”

“Well hurry up, I’ve got things to do too.”

Kidd laughed but didn’t hurry up. “Okay?” He put the kettle over the little fire and added a few pieces of dried meat.

“...Aren’t you gonna ask what I’m up to?”

Kidd shrugged. “Why, you need help with something?”

_ “No.” _ He looked offended.

“Okay, well. See you back here at dark, right? We still have our agreement, right?”

“Yeah.” Trafalgar was giving him that look again, like he thought Kidd was truly fucking cracked. Or maybe Kidd was missing something obvious?

“Something wrong with your face? I can bring you more food or whatever later. The stitches will probably keep things closed but maybe you shouldn’t go swimming—”

“Ughhh, I can get my own fish. Just go already.”

“You go! It’s daylight, you can go wherever the hell you want,” Kidd gestured out of the cave with a mock bow.

“YOU go.”

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd went. Eventually.

Along the way, he checked in on the little cache hidden in his sheltered storm-watching area atop the cliff. The spotted seal Skin was still there, still folded neatly, still soft and silky. But its lining was grey and lifeless. Not at all like shifter Skins were supposed to be—like living things, breathing and growing and changing with the the body of their owner, even at a distance.

He hesitated for a bit, then repositioned it, so it’d be visible with only a little searching, if someone were to follow him up from the beach looking for it.

 

* * *

 

 

Law wasn’t following the human, though. Law's big plan was to call Monet. The osprey feather curled and smoked as he burned it on top of a stone some distance from the cave. He blew on the ashes lightly and they fluttered away into the sky. He waited, cursing to himself, the nerves in his stomach building steadily. God, he was never gonna hear the end of this.

She got the message, of course, but she made him wait until after the sun was past its peak. Letting him stew, he thought with mounting irritation. He saw her circling overhead in osprey form, looping around lazily to check out the human village and surrounding area. He laid himself out to sun on a large flat boulder and pretended not to notice her. Finally, finally, he heard her alight heavily on the boulder by his head, massive talons scraping stone. He shaded his eyes and grimaced up at the half-feathered thing backlit above him. Piercing yellow osprey eyes stared back, huge and uncanny in Monet’s fine-featured human face.

“Soooo,” she smirked. “Teacher’s pet got in trouble. And he needs me to get him out. Hee hee.”

“Put your Skin on properly or take it off. That's perverse,” he grumbled.

“Ugh. Don't be a priss. I didn't have to come all the way out here.”

She sat back on taloned legs and stretched out arms that faded into wings at the shoulders. She'd recently taken to prancing around in this shameless, half-shifted form. Probably just to piss off their father, but it was pissing off Law too. Her clothes were almost as bad—like undergarments.

She smoothed down her pinion feathers idly. “What happened with the sea witch and the knife thing? You didn't meet up with us after like we planned, and Doffy was not happy when we went back without his special boy.”

“Do not call me that.”

“What. Doffy's special boy? But you are. Such a careful study. Always so serious.”

“Monet, you don't know shit.” Law leveled a withering glare at her.

Monet stared back, unblinking. “Your scary-glary thing doesn't work on me, little brother. Should have called Baby if you wanted someone to push around.”

“Maybe.” She was right, of course. But Law was just stubborn enough to get into a staring contest with a goddamn osprey.

She held his gaze casually. “You know, if you don't come back, if it turns out you're stuck here… I'd be the one who gets to take point on these little missions. I'd be Doffy's favorite…”

“Tch. So leave. I don't care.”

“Cool. Can I have your coin collection?”

“I should've fuckin known you'd be no help. Fuck off, Monet.” He broke their gaze and got up to leave.

Her talons clacked on the stone impatiently. “I’m just teasing. Okay? I came because I wanted to help. God, you're so… prickly and shitty whenever you have to ask for something.”

“You’re the one who has to make everything difficult!”

“Ugh. Whatever. Come back here. Just tell me what happened with the knife and the sea bitch.”

Law massaged his temples and grumbled indistinctly.

“I won't laugh,” she reassured him.

He lay back down on the rock with a sullen thud. “Shit went bad and now I'm fucking stuck here.”

“Went bad how.”

“I took too long retrieving the dagger and the sea bitch caught me. Or, almost. Got fucked up.”

“What, just that?” She cocked her head at his mostly-healed wounds. “Doesn't look that bad.”

“It's not that… it's uh…” God it KILLED him to have to admit this to her. “It's my Skin.”

“Yes?”

“She cursed my Skin.”

“Yyyyyes?”

“I can't… put it on anymore. She made it so it'd reject me, and now I can't even feel it, and I definitely can’t shift, and I told Doffy that I'd be back in seven days but it's day four now and I have no idea how to break the curse so I gotta just talk to the fuckin witch and offer her my firstborn or something to reverse it and, and so I need you to go un-steal the knife, and then take a blood offering to the witch and tell her I'll put her stuff back if she puts mine back.” Law finished, out of breath.

Monet gave a harsh snort at this jumble.

“You said you wouldn't laugh, asshole,” he grumbled.

“That was before that tragic joke came out of your mouth, little brother. I don't even know where to start. Actually I do… Steal the knife back from Doffy? We'd both be killed, first of all. No joke. For-real-killed.”

“Well what. Do you. Suggest.”

Monet looked at him upside down as he lay on the rock with his arms crossed. She scanned him with unsettling sharpness.

“Who sewed up your wound like that?” she asked finally.

“...I did.”

“No you didn't.” She gave him another look-over. “Where’s your Skin now? Why don't you show it to me? Or let me take it to the sea bitch on your behalf?”

“I… put it away. Don't wanna look at it.”

“Right. And where, little brother, are the footwraps I had made especially for you.”

“Oh, those I lost escaping the witch. Who, you know, cursed me and stuff.”

“Cora’s sake,” she swore. “I see you managed to hold onto all the little pouches Baby made for you, though…” She tapped her talons for a moment, thinking.

Law was almost ready to beg. “Look, I wouldn't be asking if I didn't—”

“Yeah yeah I know. You wouldn't even be talking to me if you had any other choice.”

He looked up at her, sharp and haughty, monstrous by her own design. Like she didn't give a shit what anyone thought. “That's not what I meant.”

She shrugged it off. “I have a price.”

“Of course you do…”

“Yes, obviously, since I'm sticking my neck out for you. And I'm not getting the knife back for you either—you'll have to negotiate with the sea bitch for a window of time to do that yourself. All I'll be doing is conveying your message and an offering to the witch, and keeping Vergo off your back. The rest is up to you.”

Law nodded. That was actually… probably a better idea than his. Get the Skin un-cursed first and figure out the knife part later.

“Okay. What's your price.”

Monet cleared her throat and looked away. “Two things. One: I want you to do my hair like you do Baby's, in those double braid things. Every day for a month.”

“What, really?”

She bristled. “Yes. Shut up. You do it for Baby like every day and it looks all fancy and then her hair is so perfectly wavy when she takes the braids out after…”

“I can show you how to do it yourself if—”

“NO. I want you to do it for me. Every day. For a month.”

Law almost smiled but figured that'd be taken as an insult. “You're assuming I'll get out of this in one piece.”

She cracked a slight grin. “Yeah. Anyway, here's the second part: You can't do Baby's hair for the entire month.”

His brows knit together. “What? Why?”

“Because that's my price. Problem?”

“No, I… guess not.”

“Good.” She suddenly beamed like she'd won some elaborate game. “Starting now.”

“What, you want your hair done before you go see the witch?”

“Yes.”

“Hah.” He sat up again, shuffling back on the rock. “Okay, whatever you want. Bring your head over here.”

Monet went and sat in front of him, taloned legs crossed almost primly, feathered arms in her lap. Law combed out the tangles with his fingers and parted it down the middle. He measured out two thin locks on the right side first, and began plaiting tightly, right from the temple. He was good at this. One of his only memories of his long-ago selkie life was his mother sitting with him and showing him how to braid his little sister's hair. Long, fine, black hair, like Baby’s. Doing Baby's was nice; somehow comforting. Monet's pale blonde hair, in the other hand, was thick and wavy, and he kept getting his fingers tangled. But he kept his frustration to himself, knowing that the point of this request was not so much the braid, as having Law do it.

“Is she pretty?” Monet suddenly asked.

Law stopped. “What? Who?”

“Your human girl. The one who sewed you up. The one who clearly has your Skin and yet still lives and breathes. Ow.”

Law rolled his eyes and tugged the plait again to tighten it. “There's no girl. Have you ever known me to take an interest in women?”

“Nah… never.” Monet was silent a while longer. “So. Is  _ he _ pretty, then—OW!”

He pulled her hair even harder, his face heating up, but she just giggled.

“Ohhh little brother… I could go get your Skin for you, you know. Deal with the human, Doffy-style. It'd be my pleasure; I wouldn't even ask for anything in exchange.”

“It's under control,” he said tersely.

“Right,” she smirked.

“It’s fine, okay? I’ll have it back in three days. It’s the curse that’s the problem.”

Monet clucked her tongue. “If you think he’s gonna give it back freely, you’re in deeper than I thought.” 

Law grumbled, “Give me some credit. I’m not Baby.”

“No, you're really not.  _ You _ should know better than her what it means when you start wanting to believe a human’s bullshit.”

He didn’t respond to that, and she let him finish without further provocation. After he tied the ends, she felt the tight pair of plaits and tossed her head in satisfaction. Law sat picking at shiny flecks in the rock, hoping that the lecture was done.

“You know what lovers are good for, Law?” Monet stood and stretched her wings.

“I simply can't imagine,” he murmured drily.

“Breaking curses.” She gave him a significant look.

“Oh was that it.”

“I'm juuust reminding you that you have more cards in your hand than you think. Anyway, I must be off, I've got baby seals to slaughter and giftwrap; angry witches to pacify.”

“Does the offering really have to be a seal?” Law frowned. A large fish was more traditional. Or a small human.

“I think she'll appreciate it. I hear she has a dark sense of humor.”

“Great.”

“Oh my god, lighten up. You take everything so seriously!”

Law scoffed at that. But he called her back quietly as she prepared to leave. “Monet.”

“What.”

“I would've done your hair for you whenever, if you'd asked.”

“Pfff. Then I would have owed  _ you.” _

She wrapped her Skin tight around her and an osprey emerged from the sudden swirl of feathers, taking off and winging out over the water.

 


	8. Keep your mouth shut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wait, another chapter of setup after all. Kidd dealing handily in the underworld currency of small town secrets
> 
> Warnings: Graphic violence, suggested sexual violence, prostitution, predatory older men

 

The fucking ox shoes slipped out of his grip for the third time, and Kidd threw the tongs at the anvil with a growl of frustration. Fuck this, his uncle could finish the order. He sat against the wall and collected himself.

Genzo stuck his head in the smithy door and scowled through his drooping mustache. “You screw up any more ox shoes and I'll nail em to _you.”_

Kidd grunted irritably. He’d stayed with his uncle and aunt (technically Belle’s uncle and aunt) on and off for most of his life, but never really lived with them, and never quite been accepted by his aunt. It generally worked out: they were old and childless and needed the help. He was young and impossible to control but pretty handy in the smithy. And sometimes he needed food or stitching up, so whatever.

“What's the problem, boy.”

“I… gotta take off. Deal with a thing.”

“Oh? What thing is that.”

“Just.” Kidd gestured vaguely at his shoulder. “Need Belle to sew something up.”

“If it's just the usual, Muriel can do ya, and then you can get the hell back to work.”

“I’m not letting your pinch-faced sow at me with any kind of sharp thing,” Kidd retorted. He hauled himself up and pulled off his leather apron, tossing it in a corner.

“My pinch-faced sow’s a hell of a lot handier with a needle than your mother. You've given her enough to practice on.”

They heard the sow in question holler something at them from outside.

“The pinch-faced sow will waste thread on whatever unwashed mongrel I tell her to!” Genzo hollered back. “Where d’you think you're going,” he added to Kidd.

“I’ll come back when my hammer arm’s less fulla slime. Garp’s ox can fuckin wait a day.”

“Aw hell. You let something fester, boy? You ain't learn from having that toe taken off?”

Kidd shuddered at the memory. “That was cuz the fuckin hag used a dirty needle in the first place.”

There was a hollered retort from the hag.

“The fuckin hag will sew up fifty feral brats if it gets these damn ox shoes done!” Genzo turned and yelled out the door, mustache quivering.

 

* * *

 

Kidd gathered a couple supplies and bulled his way past his irate uncle and obstinate aunt.

He stomped out of the smithy with purpose, but doubled back once he was on the road, going instead via the fields behind the village and then the blackwood path. Less traffic that way. He didn't need any fucked up encounters while he was half-poisoned with his own stale blood.

But, well.

At least he heard them coming before they heard him this time, and managed to get himself concealed up in the branches of a tree. Bartolomeo and Cavendish passed moments later, caught up in some heated argument that seemed to be about Drake. Kidd had a moment of fierce satisfaction at the battered state of Bartolomeo's face.

“...his old man asking around, and you know he’s gonna...”

“...little fuck will keep his mouth shut. Don’t worry about it. Let’s go meet the girls.”

Cavendish sneered, “The _girls._ I’m so tired of those preening whores.”

“Well I’m not tired of getting my dick sucked. C’mon.” Bartolomeo pulled on his arm.

“You go. I'm gonna go find Hawkins.” The waspish blond turned toward the village with a dismissive flip of one hand.

 _“Hawkins,”_ Bartolomeo mocked under his breath. He hesitated, shifting foot to foot, before catching up with Cavendish and blocking his way.

“Cav! Cav, c'mon man, it'll chill you out. You been a pissy little shit lately. No offense.”

“Yeah, pass.”

He kept walking and Bartolomeo seethed for a moment before calling after him, “Well they're better at it than you anyway!”

Kidd almost laughed out loud. He fuckin knew it.

Cavendish was up in Bartolomeo's face in a split second. “Fucking SHUT IT. You said you wouldn’t—”

“Just saying. Far as preening whores go—”

He was interrupted by a swift jab in the jaw that made his teeth clack audibly. Kidd stifled another laugh. This was too good.

Bartolomeo wiped a stained sleeve over a bloody lip and glared. Then turned suddenly and stalked down the path toward the village. “Don't try and follow me!”

Cavendish snorted and kicked angrily at the tree Kidd was perched in. Obviously the two were going the same direction, but now he couldn't fuckin go without looking like he was following the guy. It was all the best kind of fucked Kidd could have hoped for. The chaos gods were clearly smiling on him for once.

He waited until Bartolomeo was out of earshot and Cavendish was sulking against the tree.

“So babyface is chasing some demon dick, huh,” he mused aloud, casting a sly grin down at the suddenly horrified face below.

“Kidd…?”

“You convince him to fuck you yet?”

Cavendish stumbled upright and cast a frantic look after Bartolomeo. He didn't call after him though.

“Kidd, shut your fuckin mouth, I… I swear to fuck I will make sure you're the one strung up on the waypost next time—”

“Guess that's a no. Poor ‘Cav.’” Kidd jumped down from the tree and ambled up until he was standing over the blond. “A pretty mouth don't get you jack if you don't know how to use it, huh?”

“I’m…” Cavendish wavered but stood his ground. He cleared his throat angrily. “Guess I'm not a pro like you.”

Kidd’s grin just widened. “Guess not. Well you know where to come if you need lessons, prettyboy.”

“Fuck off. As if I’d ever have to pay for it.”

“Aw, Cav. I wouldn't charge ya. You can suck my dick anytime.”

Cavendish scoffed and glared but seemed out of words. His face was red with embarrassed rage. Kidd needled him a little more—grabbing his chin and pressing a thumb to his mouth—and Cavendish shoved him away.

Kidd spread his hands and walked on by, strolling up the path away from the village. He smiled to himself when Cavendish called after him.

“Don’t you fucking dare say shit to anyone about me. You hear me? I'll—”

“Now that,” Kidd paused as though remembering something. “That won't come free.”

Cavendish eyed him. “What do you want.”

“I'll think of something,” Kidd walked on.

Behind him, the haughty sneer had returned. “Won’t fuckin matter. You'll be dead in a field soon. Drake's dad's been asking around about who fucked up his little boy’s face. I hear he broke Drake's arm over it, and he'll do worse to you.”

“Huh.” Kidd filed that away for later. One fuckin thing at a time.

He left Cavendish standing among the grim black trees, and climbed the path up toward his distant house. His shoulder still ached and his limbs felt weak, but he'd maybe stumbled on a way to keep the local strays off his back. At least for a while.

 

 

* * *

 

Kidd breezed in the front door of his house without much worry, but stopped when he got inside. He felt his senses snap to attention. His mother was sitting at the table with her feet up, an unfamiliar man at each elbow. They were all lounging around playing some drinking game with little cups and dice.

The men looked him over. He looked down. Belle threw back the contents of her cup.

“It’s just the boy. Your turn, big guy.” She nudged the tall, cheerful-looking man on her left, turning her cup upside down to cover one of his dice.

He chuckled and threw a coin and a die into another cup, then shook and spilled it out on the table. “Four for me, and tails for the table. I'll take it.”

The other, a smaller man with slicked-back hair, raised a cup to Kidd with a mocking smile. “Wanna join, boy?”

Kidd didn't bother answering. He evaluated the room: They'd brought peameal and mutton in payment, enough for both men. The big one had taken his shoes off but the other hadn't. Belle was winning the game (cheating). Kidd's various hidden weapons were still in place.

“Like the kid has money for the buy-in,” Belle yawned. “Let him be.”

Kidd went to move past them, heading straight for the door to the other room. But he was stopped by the smaller man holding a sloshing cup to his chest.

“I got two copper for ya, son. All yours. One round.”

Kidd breathed out heavily.

Belle raised her eyebrows at him. It was two coppers right in her pocket, after all.

He took the cup, and the man dropped two coins into another. Kidd added two dice to it, shook it, and spilled it out on the table. They went around, dice and coins clattering. Belle and the tall man exchanged crude remarks, and the small man said nothing, but chucked along. The acrid fumes rising from the cup burned Kidd’s nose.

Finally, his dice came up lacking, and Belle claimed his coins. Of course. She added the copper to her stack and Kidd knocked back the burning liquid in one swallow.

“What is this horsepiss.” He wiped his mouth.

“Just some cheer from the old world. Have another for your health, boy.”

“Whatever.” Kidd downed the second as smoothly as the first. He turned the cup over to cover one of the man's dice.

The man grinned. “One more round.”

“Kidd, check on the girls,” Belle directed. He took that as permission to bolt.

“Girls? There's more of you lovely things hiding somewhere?” The tall man chuckled again.

“Not that you can fuck,” Kidd shot at him acidly before escaping into the other room.

“Babies,” Belle clarified, to the tall man’s great embarrassment. The pushy man seemed to find this funny.

 

* * *

 

The alcohol came back up easy enough, burning like it had on the way down. Kidd washed his mouth out with the last of the morning washwater. The babies were napping peacefully in the darkened bedroom, with Nami somehow taking up most of the bed. He shifted her over and flopped onto the straw pallet with a groan. Stray tendrils of drink and infection swam in his head and made him nauseous. Looked like his shoulder wouldn't get tended to til evening, and he couldn't leave the girls until the men were gone… might as well lie down.

He dozed uneasily until a change in the house's muffled ambience dinged his tightly-wound senses. It was quiet... But he could hear low murmuring, hard breathing. It fucking grated on his ears.

Kidd pushed himself up, head throbbing, with vague plans of getting water. Once outside the side door he blinked and paused. Bright—he’d almost forgotten it was day.

“Boy.”

Fuck.

The pushy man was leaning on the low stone wall outside the house. “Doesn’t bother you? Your mother in there getting her hole stuffed?”

Kidd should just stay quiet. Just get the water and get back inside. He shrugged and crossed to the gap in the wall.

“Nah, not even, huh” the man chuckled. “You’re used to this.”

Kidd's skin prickled, and he stopped and turned to survey the pushy man. He was no taller than Kidd, and slighter. He seemed completely at ease, smoking a pipe as he waited his turn, half drunk, and with his knife worn at the back of his belt—out of the way, but out of easy reach. It all added up to something less than threatening, but Kidd had miscalculated before.

“I don't recognize you. Who’s your family,” Kidd asked bluntly.

“Aw, I'm not anyone. I work for the Basils. They're distant cousins.”

Huh. Just some fucking farm hand with a few coppers, and the nerve to be coming up here, getting all tanked in broad daylight. Okay… yeah, okay. Kidd glanced between the house and the road, adding it all up again and again.

The man caught his furtive look, and stalked closer. “So how much.”

“For…?”

“You.”

“Yeah, for what.”

“Let’s say you suck me off.”

“Hah.” Kidd crossed his arms and leaned against the low stone wall. “Let’s see what you have to work with and I’ll tell ya.”

“Damn right, haha, wait’ll you see this,” the greasy bastard gloated, unbuckling himself. “Knew it, fuckin knew it, haha…”

Kidd watched him fumble, expressionless. “Knew what.”

“Folks talk, y’know. Young kid up here, while your mom does what she does. And easy enough on the eyes, even all scratched up. Must get some attention, right? Must either pack a mean punch or swallow cock like hell.”

“One or both.”

“Heheh.” The man pulled his trousers to his knees and smirked like he thought Kidd should be impressed.

Kidd really wasn’t. He stepped just within reach.

“Hey, you look like you seen some rough action. Maybe a couple extra coppers and I can knock ya around a little, huh? You like that?”

“Maybe,” Kidd cracked his knuckles.

And drove his fist with all his strength right into the man’s subpar assets.

“Uhhkk… kkkk…” he croaked, doubled over.

A laugh bubbled out of Kidd. He grabbed onto the man’s shirt and drove a knee up into his stomach. Then another, more vicious, the laugh more of a snarl this time. He knew he shouldn't leave marks but… this… _fucker._ Bottom-feeding _fucker._ Thought he smelled easy pickings, did he? Wanted some rough action? Thought it was all fucking _funny?_ Well, it was.

“You not laughing anymore, buddy? All a good joke huh. C’mon, laugh, Ha-HA, like that, hahahaa…”

A final gut punch ended it. The man vomited and crumpled with a weak gurgle.

“Haha… nice. Fuckin nice.” Easy, even. Kidd planted a foot in his back and handily relieved the pathetic lump of his coin purse. The lump gurgled and wheezed, facedown in the mess ejected from his stomach.

The victor sat himself cross-legged on top of the wall to count his spoils. It took a minute… the pouch had some kinda fuckin trick opening, all loops and shit.

The man regained his breath quickly. “Hhh… Hkkt… He-Hector! Get out here, HECTOR!!”

Kidd gave him a contemptuous look. “Aw, really? You shitsucker.”

“HECTOR THIS LITTLE FUCK IS ROBBING US.”

The door banged open and the tall man came stumbling out, doing himself up. Belle darted out soon after and they reached the wall in seconds. Kidd ignored them. He’d gotten into the purse and was thumbing over the metal inside. The guy squelching in his own puke on the ground seemed to remember that his pants were half off, and struggled to get his bruised valuables put away while the newcomers gawked.

“The FUCK is happening??”

Kidd kept counting out coins. “Perv said he'd give me five copper to kick him in the nads while he jerked it, so.”

The tall man made a disgusted face. “Jesus, Kevin.”

“No! Nono, he’s full of crap! He attacked me!” The guy was rolling around with his dick out, though, so no one believed him.

“Kidd,” Belle scolded, “give the man his purse back.”

Kidd huffed and tilted the coins back into the pouch. “First dickpunch is on the house, I guess,” he tossed it to the red-faced farmhand.

He caught it and blustered, “You better keep your mouth shut, boy—”

“Oh, that?” Kidd cocked his head like he’d just remembered something. “That's gonna cost ya.”

There was silence for a moment. The man fumed. But he tossed the entire purse back. “Keep it all, you little cocksucker.”

“Sweet. Well, anytime you need your balls crunched—”

“Shut up.” He got himself collected and took off down the hill, back toward the village.

His tall friend loitered a moment, grumbling.

“You won’t get your junk pummeled if you come again, big guy. Unless you wanna,” Belle assured him, and he chuckled again. He gave her ass a squeeze and reluctantly took off after his friend, leaving Belle and Kidd alone.

Belle tapped her fingers on her arm and looked sideways at Kidd as he fiddled with the purse.

“You're a little too old to be pulling this shit, honey.” She had her ‘warning’ voice on but Kidd was feeling difficult.

“What shit is that.”

“Don’t be smart with me. This perv-punishing shit. Messing with my customers.”

“What, you believe him? You think I jumped him?” He turned to look at her straight-on, and she was the one who looked away.

“No… fuck. I know what these guys are like. I’m saying there’s other ways you coulda dealt with his shit, ways that don’t lose me business, and you fuckin know it.”

Kidd scowled and hunched into himself. Nausea and guilt was washing in now that the tense vigilance had eased off. _“Business,”_ he muttered.

Belle snapped, “Yeah, business. The shit that keeps you from starving? The babies from starving?”

“I know, okay? It’s just. Fucked.”

“Well it’s not _you_ getting fucked, is it. All you gotta do is deal with it. God. Can't you just help me take care of this fuckin family for once?”

“I… I am. I fuckin am…”

“No, you’re taking care of your own private crusade. Well, I need you to fucking stow it and swallow your fair spoonful of crap every once in a while.”

The babies had woken. They could hear Nami squalling loud and clear, Nojiko starting up a worried tremor too. Kidd hesitated for a moment, sitting on the wall with the coin purse. He should be in there, so they weren’t waking up alone, again… But he jumped down on the far side of the wall. Away from the house and everything inside it.

“Oh sure, come home long enough to cause some shit and then take off again,” Belle complained.

Kidd threw the coin purse at her. “Here's for the trouble.”

She tsked and caught it easily by the strings. Just looked at it for a while. “Kidd,” she called to his retreating back.

“Don't fuckin talk to me.”

She shook her head. “Kidd, that fuckin gorilla Diez been asking around after you. That's not a family to mess with, I thought you learned that already. What’s he after?”

“Dunno, Belle. Maybe he wants a kick in the cunt too.” Kidd walked away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is getting way longer than I thought it was gonna be… but I'm getting really into writing family stuff and fucked up life conditions. Okay NEXT chapter the ship gets actually sailing, stay tuned
> 
> Art by fanart fairy, omg gorgeous cav


	9. Blood like a blanket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kidd would like to know why Law heals so damn fast. Law doesn't remember why, but he starts to remember how.
> 
> Warnings: Very graphic descriptions of an infected wound and treatment. If you don't wanna deal with pus or stitches, stop after the first break, search ‘relief’ and start there.

 

Eustass came back in the middle of the afternoon this time, surprising Law as he sunned himself on a stone outside the cave. He didn't look any more messed up than he had that morning, but illness still wafted off him, along with something acrid.

“What, your uncle let you go early?” Law questioned him without getting up.

“Nah. I took off. Had to manage some fucked shit.” Eustass stomped past and into the cave.

“...oookay?”

There was banging and indistinct muttering from the cave. Law turned onto his front and watched curiously.

“What kind of fucked shit?” he called into the darkness.

Eustass snorted, irritable and echoey. “You name it.”

“...Thievery?” Law tried.

“Oh fuck yes. Fleeced a guy out of his purse then lost it to my mother. Blackmailed another, that count?”

“Sure. Thuggery?”

“Thumped a perv in the dong.”

Law stifled a laugh. “Hhrm. Dissolution?”

“Drank some old world rotgut and ran support on a rigged dice game.”

“Whoring.”

There was a sharp bang and a scoff from the cave. “In general, yeah, but ~business~ was shit today.”

“You're completely full of crap,” Law accused. “Did you cause the downfall of human society too?”

Eustass emerged with the kettle and a small bag of stuff that he piled on the beach. He started gathering driftwood. “Well I fucked up three ox shoes pretty good, so if Garp’s ox breaks a leg tomorrow and every single celestial noble starves in the peameal drought, you know who to thank.”

Law did laugh this time. If half of that bullshit was true, the human was an accomplished scofflaw indeed. “Is this just what you get up to when you're not enslaving helpless shifters?”

“Yeah… yeah.” A little driftwood fire had gotten started on the rough stone beach. Eustass fed bits of long grass into the flames idly, watching them burn and curl. He looked over at Law. “You manage any fucked shit today?”

Law rolled onto his back on the stone. “Mostly murder. Just the planning part.”

“Oh yeah, still gotta kill me huh. What's the plan now?”

“Okay so,” Law mapped it out with his hands against the blue sky. “Dismemberment. I get a pair of scissors—”

“...Scissors.”

“Just hear me out,” Law shushed him. “Scissors. First, I get you up on top of the cliff. By the look of you, I figure most of you is held together with spit and stitches at this point…”

Eustass chuckled. “Pretty much.”

“So what I have to do is find the end of all the thread, snip it, then hold onto it while I push you off the cliff.”

“Ha! What!”

“The stitches all pull out in one go, and you unravel into little pieces that rain down on the beach.”

Eustass laughed and laughed at this. “How do you come up with this shit!”

Law rolled off the stone and came to sit at the fire too. “I could ask you the same thing.”

The human chewed his cheek, laughter tapering off. “I wasn't making any of it up.” He looked the selkie over. “Should check your stitches, speaking of.”

“Ah… yeah I guess.” He sat still while the human scooted up next to him and examined the wound on his ribs.

Eustass made a disbelieving noise. “It’s… healed. It's completely fucking healed already.”

Law looked down at the little raised line. Closed, with no redness or swelling. The threads were hanging loose. “Oh, so the stitches worked, huh.”

“But stitches don't make you heal faster, they just keep you from popping open.” He checked the thigh wound too—also closed, only a white crease left.

“I told you, I just heal fast. It usually doesn't leave a mark like that though, ugh.” Law complained. He hadn't gotten a wound as deep as these before, so that was probably it.

Eustass threw up his hands, “Man, fuck you. That’s so cheap, I woulda been laid out like forever from something like that.”

“Hm.” Law cast a furtive glance over the other’s marks.

“Guess I'll take out the stitches?” Eustass pulled out his knife. Law jumped a little, despite himself, and the human hesitated. “Uh… unless you wanna do it yourself?”

The knife hilt was being held out to Law again. Not a game, he knew now. It was okay. But he still didn't take it. “I uh… I don't know what to do. Can you just…?”

“Yeah, totally. You don't have to lie down or anything, it'll only take a minute.”

“Yeah.”

Eustass shuffled closer again, so he was sitting right in front of Law. “I'm not gonna cut you, just the threads. Okay? See, I'll—”

“Shut up, I know, just do it.”

“Doing it,” he muttered, hunching down to focus on his work.

Law didn't watch the knife this time. He watched the human. Eustass was frowning in concentration, making his face even more severe than usual. But his hands were gentle as he fit the tip of the blade through each loop and tugged.

“Did you actually do all that stuff like you said?” Law asked.

“Um. Yeah…” His eyes flicked up for a moment. Red. The irises were the same color as his hair.

“Where did you go?”

“Just home.”

Law thought about this, but left that line of questioning alone for now. Eustass was easing the cut threads out slowly, one at a time. Felt so weird, like a scab coming off from under the skin. Didn't hurt, though.

“How did you learn how to do this?”

The human shrugged. “Dunno, guess I just seen my aunt and mom do it enough times.”

The sewn-up gash peeking through the red hair looked the same as before—not healed at all. There was a scab along his temple that was on its way to closing. And white nicks and lines all over. If he healed that slowly, he must just always have some part of his insides open to the outside. Law realized he was staring and tsked to himself, looking away. And then back. Something had been needling him since his meeting with Monet. It had taken a huge weight off him to talk to her and get a course of action lined up, but as he thought about their conversation, a different anxiety was starting to creep in.

“So I hung out with my sister today,” Law started casually.

“The human chaser?”

“No, older sister. Hates humans, almost as much as our father.”

“Kay. So what's up with her.” The human didn’t seem the least bit concerned.

“Well she offered to splat you for me.” Law just threw that out there, watching for a reaction.

“Heh… I think I'll take the drowning option, if that's cool.” Eustass pulled out the final thread and threw it into the fire with the rest. He examined the closed wound with satisfaction before moving away to mess around with the fire.

“Haha… Sure thing.”

Eustass rustled around, setting a kettle of water on to boil and pulling some scraps of stuff out of his bag. Law sat and ran restless fingers through his own hair. There was some kind of uncomfortable coldness in the pit of his stomach. Felt like doubt and… weirdness. Whatever, he’d analyze it later.

It took Law a moment to clue into the weirdness of what the human was up to. “Wait, why did you make a fire? We're outside. And it's daytime.”

“Ah, there's just… something I gotta do. You don't have to stick around and entertain me, it's not dark yet.” Eustass wrapped his hand in cloth and pulled from the fire… his knife, its blade glowing dimly red.

“Whoa, wait, what? Why does the dirk have fire?”

“Just to clean it. I'll let it cool down before using it. You actually might wanna be gone for this.”

Law stared at him. “For… what?”

“I got a cut that's all infected, so I gotta open it up and drain it so it doesn't poison me.” He pulled off his tunic and gave Law a little half grin. “Wanna see?”

“Oh hell no.”

“Didn't think so. I’m kinda glad I can't see it myself… it's on my back.”

Law watched, mystified, as Eustass pulled out another needle and thread. “You're gonna stab yourself in the back and then sew yourself up. Without looking.”

“Yeah… guess I’ll try, huh.”

“Why don't you ask whoever did the other stitches?”

“Cuz I _don't_ need her help,” Eustass growled. “I've done this before. It's fine.”

“On your back?”

“Well, no, but whatever.”

Law rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers on his knee. Finally, he laughed to himself. Or maybe at himself. Whatever, this didn't have to mean anything.

He held out his hand, palm up. “So you gonna let me stab you or what.”

The human raised both eyebrows at this. “I wasn't asking you to do it.”

“Yeah, but I don't want you to bleed out before giving me my Skin back.” He waved his fingers. “Gimme that.”

Eustass gave him the dirk.

 

* * *

 

 

Law could see the nervous tension in the human’s back—shoulders hunched up, rising and falling as he breathed. The wound just above his shoulder blade was only a few inches long, but the seam was a blackened mouth, and the mottled purple-yellow of infected tissue spread all around it. It had clearly never been treated. Law spread the skin taut with one hand, making a solid surface for the blade to puncture, and that alone got a flinch and a soft grunt of pain.

“Okay,” Law reassured himself.

“Fuck,” Eustass braced himself.

Law pressed the knife edge lightly, lightly between the black lips of the wound, and the flesh buckled up but refused to part.

Eustass urged him on, unsteadily, “Y-you have to actually—”

“I know, shut up,” Law hissed.

“Thought you'd cut up people and everything before.”

“Yeah well a pouch of rot on a living guy is a little different!”

He steeled himself and made a hard, quick slice. Eustass jerked and swore. Something like bloody gruel leapt out and began streaming down his back.

“Oh GOD!” Law nearly dropped the knife in his scramble to grab the cloth.

“Fuck the rag, just gotta let it run til it's all out,” Eustass grit through clenched teeth. “Get the edges cut back like I said, hurry up, fuck!”

“Don't tell me what to do!”

“Don't fuck around then!”

Law tried not to breathe in. “Fuuuuhck, smells like rotting meat, I’ll never be able to eat human again after this.”

“You’ll what?!”

“Stop moving, I swear to Cora I will carve off your entire arm if any of this gets on me.”

“I'll throttle you til you're made of the stuff if you so much as slip!” Eustass shot back.

“You’re so full of shit.”

“You're an actual animal—AAAGH! FUCK!”

Law opened it fully, then started cutting back the sickly tissue with slightly frantic swipes.

“Til you reach stuff that bleeds normally,” Eustass grit out. “And you don't need to stab so much.”

“You fucking ordered me to hurry up so this is actually YOU stabbing you.”

Law sliced and let pieces fall as Eustass flinched and gasped, until there was more blood than gruel streaming out.

“Okay it's clean. I think. Gonna rinse it.”

“Ngh.”

“Still with me?”

“Yes. _God.”_

Once the flesh in front of him looked more like a fresh battle wound and less like the inside of a week-dead mussel, Law found his hands much steadier.

“Yeah, that wasn't so bad,” he mused.

Eustass laughed a little hysterically. _“Wasn't so bad,_ he says. Fuck.”

“You're still breathing; you're fine. Okay I'm gonna do the needle torture now.”

“You're actually enjoying this aren't you.” Eustass accused.

“One of us might as well,” Law murmured, threading the steel needle the way the human had showed him.

He pinched the lips of the wound together and pushed the needle down and through. A delicate loop, finished with a precise knot, like he'd seen Eustass do on him, but… better. Then another. It made a very satisfying little pop each time the needle punctured the skin. Twelve evenly-spaced stitches in a row, and the wound was closed. He cut off the excess thread and admired his work.

“There. Done.”

Eustass let out a long, shaky breath of deep relief, and put his head in his hands. Law hmmed to himself in satisfaction. It was nice—the thread all neat and tight, the wound reduced to a thin red line.

As Law ran a finger along just under the orderly ribbed line, still red and inflamed but stitched so neatly… some long-forgotten memory began to surface. Not a recollection of any fact or event, but a kind of sense memory—an idea that maybe blood isn’t so much a stream as a fabric. Or a blanket? At least, before knives interfere and set it flowing.

“Like a blanket…” he mouthed to himself, trying to remember. Trying to wrap his tongue around the name of the something swimming slowly, slowly into view in his mind. Like a song he almost almost knew, but all he had was one word: Blanket. Law’s finger followed the trail of threads he’d left in the human’s skin, and more of the strange sense-memory came murmuring up.

He started to see how maybe blood really is a blanket—warm wet life wrapping you up all perfect all tightly woven all deep inside, in the dark of you. Maybe veins are threads, red warp, blue weft.

A tear in the blanket makes all the threads scream. Their color bleeds out and the cold bleeds in… but there's a way to tie them again.

They just need

more blood.

“You’re bleeding,” he murmured to the sore, wilting web of fibers in the human's back. And the way he said it, he could tell they were listening.

“Uh, yeah,” answered Eustass. “You stabbed me a lot.”

“Not you,” Law dismissed him, trying to hold that one idea in his head as he traced the cut. _“You._ You’re torn. But… you’ll… mend??”

It was clumsy, it didn't completely heal the wound, but it started to. Law could almost hear the individual layers of flesh click together all the way along the cut. Pop pop pop—even more satisfying than needles poking through skin. The red line faded to pink, and the swollen tissue eased and cooled.

Eustass felt the change right away. He frowned and rolled his shoulder. “The hell?? What’d you do? It's like… stuff is… better?”

Law gave him an exasperated shove. “It’s like ‘stuff’ is ‘better,’ he says. Unbelievable. Poetic. I just called up some dregs of actual fucking spellcraft I didn't know I knew, and this is what you have to report about the experience,” he scolded the human, but Law was almost giddy. He felt like he'd just uncovered a treasure he'd buried and forgotten. He felt… really lightheaded.

“...spellcraft huh.” Eustass thought about this. “This a new thing for you? Like, just outta nowhere?”

“I don't know?”

Law kept running searching fingers over the scars on Eustass' back and shoulders, looking for another source of inspiration. Eustass let him, but the tension was returning to his frame.

“Trafalgar, uh. Doesn't that kinda stuff usually like… cost something? Like, not that I know shit about it, but I know if you go to a spellworker or witch or whatever and ask them to fuck with nature for you, there’s usually… some fucked up exchange?”

“Don't know!” Law grinned at him broadly.

“Um. You’re looking really pale.”

Law keeled over.

 

* * *

 

 

He surfaced an eternity later, stiff and cold as hell, but still buzzing with the image he'd retrieved from some deep inner sea of memory. _Blood like a blanket…_ He was actually under a blanket, he slowly realized. It smelled like land-goers and damp. But he was still so cold. He lifted his head and his vision swam at even that movement.

“Still alive, great spellcrafter?” Eustass was sitting next to him, prodding the fire. They were back in the cave.

“Blood s’like a blanket,” Law slurred at him.

“It’s… what?”

“Also, I think I used a bunch of my own blood to fix your thing.”

“...Oh.”

“Shoulda used yours…” Law grimaced at the shadowed ceiling. It was dark outside and a fire roared next to them, though Law couldn't feel it. He must have used up a lot of fucking blood—this was worse than after he’d been cut himself. Everything was fuzzy.

Eustass pushed a bowl at him. “Trafalgar, you gotta drink this broth, okay?”

“No I don't it tastes so bad.”

The human insisted, “Don’t be a shit. If you're low on blood you need to drink stuff.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I'm cold.”

“Because you have like no blood in you.” Eustass was about ready to pour it down the selkie’s throat.

“Ugh.” Law looked around. “Gimme more blankets.”

“You've got both blankets on you.” Eustass shoved the bowl in his face and Law gave in with a great deal of snark and eye rolling. He drank, hands shaking, until there was a warm bubble in his belly. But it wasn't spreading to his limbs. He was _so_ fucking cold.

“Eustass-ya? You're warm…”

“Yeah? I still got most of my blood.”

Law extended an impatient hand. “Share.”

“...My blood??”

“Your YOU. Come here.”

“There?” Eustass hesitated and Law grabbed his wrist and tugged. “You want…?”

“Lie here and be warm,” the selkie instructed.

“You can't tell me what to do,” the human grumbled.

But he shuffled in under the blankets too, lying stiffly as Law draped himself around his heat. Law dropped his head onto the broad chest and felt an arm wrap around his back. A thumb played tentatively over his shoulder. His shivering eased.

“Mm. You're like blood,” Law murmured.

The thumb paused. “… … thanks?”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The shit I make you sit through to get to the good stuff, right?? But what is KidLaw without some tender loving bloodshed
> 
> Art by mysterious fanart fairy -- she was all into the pus part


	10. Human Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Law goes browsing through Kidd’s secrets.
> 
> Another shameless scar kink chapter :)
> 
> Warnings: Past torture, past violence, past self harm, explicit sex (consensual but still colored by captivity), excruciating adolescent awkwardness. A bit of a reverse warning too: the 'rape' tag does NOT apply here, and will never apply to the main pairing in this fic. Kay? It's there for stuff in arcs 2-3, just wanted to put it up from the outset so nobody's blindsided.

 

Law woke in the night, knowing, without knowing how, that his blood levels were restored to normal. The feeling was back in his extremities, his head clear, the gripping cold gone. He stayed nestled against Eustass, though. Cuz… whatever. It was still kinda cold out, and the human radiated perfect heat. Smelled like it, even… Now that the infection was gone, Eustass’ scent had settled into steel, charcoal, salt sweat, dry blood—all warmth and strength, though an edge of injury lingered.

It was that edge, though, that made the mixture so heady.

Law let his fingers wander over the scars arrayed before him. Dim ripples in the dark. There was one just under Eustass’ collar bone, shaped like a long finger had pressed into the skin. It felt hard but smooth, like candle wax melted and then solidified.

A sudden flash assaulted his senses. A memory, but not Law’s: Pressure and fear and HEAT like a digging clutching claw, like fat sizzling and popping in a pan, like your throat raw from screaming too much—

Law jerked his hand away and sucked his bottom lip. He tried another spot.

A trio of short, ragged trails on the human’s shoulder—indents like a pen makes in paper. This time it wasn't a glimpse of pain and panic, but fierce energy. The deep satisfaction of fists connecting with another body, and barely a sting as uselessly grasping fingernails caught and skidded.

_ Nice. _ Exhilarating.

Law peeled the blankets back just a bit and found some interesting ones patterning his chest and ribs on one side. Long parallel gashes that felt like… nothing? Cold. Like Law’s fingers had frozen, the nerves deadened.

Most other spots yielded only vague impressions, or told him unfamiliar things. But it was all still so intoxicating. As though all that easy violence, all those scars were a liquid he could dip his hands into at will. Pure shots of something raw. And yeah, sure, the human was kinda pretty, as Monet had guessed. The fuck did she know, though? As if Law would get taken in by something as basic as strong shoulders and a defined jaw. Baby had collected (and Doffy dispatched) men way prettier than this before (not that Law had been noticing them or anything). And none of those shallow dipshits had been remotely as interesting as  _ Law’s _ human. As deeply textured.

His hands skipped lower.

A stomach taut and smooth. No scars here, but Law still wanted to touch.

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd surfaced somewhere dark, a hand sliding down his body. Panic flared and he grabbed it, wrenching it back.

Trafalgar’s critical eyes blinked at him from the darkness. “Um.”

The cave. Nighttime. The selkie, sitting at his side, hovering half over him. Kidd released a shaky breath and let the arm go, thumping his head back on the mat. “Jesus.”

“Hi.”

“Hi. The fuck?”

“Just um… seeing.”

“Seeing what. If you could give me a heart attack?”

Trafalgar clicked his tongue haughtily but didn’t move away. “I dunno. If I could remember any other spellcraft stuff from just like, looking at you. It was when I was doing your stitches that the wound healing thing came back.”

“Hm.” Kidd rose to his elbows. “So can you?”

The selkie put a light finger to the long wax-like scar on Kidd's collar. “Maybe. I can kinda ‘read’ some things… I think. What's this one from? It felt hot.”

“Fire poker.”

“And this one?” He brushed the ones like indents in paper.

Kidd raised his eyebrows. “Why don't you tell me, oh great blood mage.”

“Nails? Someone you were beating into the ground, I think.”

He smiled slowly in the dark. “Yeah.”

Trafalgar paused at the more regular slices over the curve of his ribs. “These, I dunno.”

“Those are nothing.”

The selkie let that go, and moved on to test other spots. He didn't ask anything else; just touched. Chest. Neck. Kidd stayed perfectly fucking still. Which was hard, as it became more and more obvious that spellcraft ~really~ wasn't where this was going. Deft fingers, cool and light, traced over the raised marks on Kidd's suddenly very overheated face.

“Your heart's going really fast,” Trafalgar noted quietly.

Fuck. Kidd had been hoping the selkie wouldn't notice how much he was actually FREAKING OUT.

“...Mhh,” he managed.

“Um. Is this not…? Do you not…?” Trafalgar moved his hand away a little.

“Nono!” Kidd reassured him. “It's uh—”

“No yeah, I just—”

“Yeah no, I mean, if _you—”_

“I… yeah.”

“Yeah.” [1]

But the selkie still hesitated.

Kidd sat up so they were almost face to face. “Whatever you wanna,” he prompted.

“Maybe  _ you _ can… whatever?” Trafalgar suggested.

“Kay, like, ‘whatever’ whatever or?”

“Just… yeah, whatever.”

“Mhh.” [2]

Okay. Kidd swallowed a couple times. The selkie's face was a smooth crescent in the dim light reflecting from the water outside. It was probably for the best that Kidd couldn't see him, how completely perfect he was, what kind of face he was making. He could just see wide, wide eyes following his.

Kidd leaned in until he could feel little breaths on his lips. Their noses brushed.

Trafalgar seemed to suddenly realize what Kidd was going for. “But not! Um, not my mouth. I don't like… there.”

“O-okay.” Kidd tried not to fucking panic.

“Whatever else.”

He collected himself and chose another spot. He could practically taste Trafalgar’s pulse speed up, but there was no protest this time. Kidd kissed him where his neck met his ear, and the selkie just fucking melted against him with a sound like his breath fluttering away. He tasted like sea salt and wood smoke. The tail end of the long scar from that black knife was smooth under Kidd's lips.

“Fuck… yeah,” the selkie breathed as Kidd cradled his head and pressed more kisses down his neck.

“Can you… put your hands on me too? More, like before,” Kidd urged him.

“What should I, how should I…?”

“However you want. Anything you want.”

His hands hesitantly made their subtle trails over Kidd's scars again. “Does this uh, do anything for you? Can you feel stuff in your scars?”

“Not right right on them. Not really. But I just like how… how you do it all lightly.”

Kidd put his mouth everywhere he could reach without moving too much, and Trafalgar’s hands started to stutter over his skin, distracted.

“Okay,” Trafalgar huffed finally, like he was irritated or something. He pulled away and shifted as though to get up.

“What? Is everythi—uh… whoa.”

Kidd suddenly had a lap full of selkie, which was…. whoa.

“Okay, yeah,” Kidd approved.

“Yeah? Okay good.” Trafalgar settled flush against him, straddling his thighs, arms around his neck. All friction and greed.

It was really obvious, like this, how hard they both were. Frantic, over-sensitive, needy hard. Kidd wrapped both arms around his waist and pressed them tight against each other. Partly to get as much contact as possible and partly to still the selkie's movements. Fuck, had to be careful not to just come like that. Like a fucking virgin or something.

“God, you feel so good, everything, god,” Kidd groaned. “You’re just… you're fuckin—”

“Hey. Mouth. Mouth stuff.”

Kidd almost laughed out loud. He shut up, as directed, and put his mouth back to the smooth, heated skin. He sucked marks as deeply as he could, so that maybe some of them would still be there in the morning.

Their skin was sliding and sticking. Kidd didn't even know what he was kissing anymore, just that all of it tasted like arousal, animal want.

That was a rib right there, though, with its newly healed scar. And a belly button. Okay, they were toppled over on the ground and Trafalgar’s hands were in his hair.

“Just move it aside,” the selkie panted when Kidd got to his cloth thing.

“No, I want it all off,” Kidd fumbled with the belt thing and the pouch things. “Jesus, what is this, is it all tied on?”

“Oh my god. Move,  _ move. _ Here.”

“Can't you just wear pants?”

“Shut up, pants are dumb. Lose yours.”

Trafalgar shoved his own clothes off and out of the way and then started shoving at Kidd’s as he was fumbling them off.

“Just a fuckin second, can you fuckin wait—”

“Are you having trouble operating the pants?”

Kidd flipped him on his back for that, which seemed to entertain the selkie.

He laughed and wrapped his legs around Kidd. “I let you do that.”

“You're fulla shit.” Kidd slid down and got his mouth on his dick, finally, before Trafalgar had a chance to come up with a retort.

“Ahh! God, that's fuckin, just… that's…”

Kidd allowed himself a smug little grin around the dick in his mouth. He was, after all, very good at this. And the selkie was like no one he'd ever had. How was it possible that something could feel so good just to touch? Kidd ran calloused hands over him greedily. All subtle muscles and sun-darkened skin tapering smoothly down to long legs, hidden softness. He had an expressive body, Kidd's selkie, even if he was trying to stay quiet. He was leaking sweet little beads of precum, arching up against him, seeking more pressure, more heat. Kidd could probably make him come any time now, but… he wanted even more of him. He pulled back to look him over.

The selkie blinked and looked back, wound tight with want and panting open-mouthed. The human's gaze seemed to make him suddenly nervous, though.

“Does it… will it hurt?”

“You never…?” Kidd questioned.

He shook his head.

“Getting fucked… yeah, always. Less if you're used to it, but…”

Trafalgar let out a shaky laugh. “I'm not afraid of a little pain, Eustass.”

“Didn't say you were.”

“You wanna fuck me?”

“Whatever you want,” Kidd deflected.

He palmed over the other's cock, and it throbbed under his hand. Yeah, Kidd really did wanna fuck him, and he really really wanted to have it be like Trafalgar was probably imagining. To just fit into him perfect and tight, feel them melt together like that moment he'd first put his lips to his neck. Just… good.

But then there was this nagging, intrusive other part of him, this constant certainty of impending violence—someone else's if not his own. Just a vague presence in the back of his mind right now, but still always there. It fed him images of awful shit: forcing the selkie open and using him until everything good about him was ruined. He  _ could, _ it told him; he could do anything… Even worse, it told him he  _ would. _ Just how this shit goes.

“You wanna do it. So do it,” the selkie challenged.

Kidd fuckin hated that murmuring part of himself. He swallowed and focused on the selkie's touch. A gentle hand was combing through his hair, and everything quieted in his head again.

“Um, I actually wanna try something else.” Kidd leaned into the touch. 

“Like what.”

“It won't hurt,” Kidd assured him.

“I said I didn't care. I can take it. I wanna fuck.”

“Yeah, let's just do it this way, though?”

“Okay?”

Kidd put a hand to his knee. “Open your legs.”

A full-body shiver worked through the selkie at the order, but he didn't protest. He let Kidd guide his legs apart. Kidd settled himself in the cleft, hips flush against the spread thighs.

“Lie back.”

He laid back on the mat as Kidd eased his weight overtop of him. Their breath came fast and hot in the space between their faces.

“You  _ are _ gonna fuck me?”

“Nono, just gimme your hands. Here.”

“You're… big,” Trafalgar breathed nervously as Kidd guided his hands to fit in a tight circle around both their cocks. They were both so hard, wet from Kidd's mouth. They slid against each other with a slick sound.

“Just hold us like that. Kay? Just…” Kidd pulled back a little before pressing down with his body, grinding them together.

“Ahh… Eustass… nhhh…” With a shuddering sigh, the selkie relaxed under him all at once, his head falling back and his shoulders unknotting, all of him just opening completely. Kidd sank against him in response, with a feeling like… like relief and pain at the same time. He moved slowly, trying to make it all last.

“Good?” he whispered.

“Good… god, it’s good, you’re, you’re perfect… you're nothing like him, everything about you feels good…”

Something caught in Kidd’s throat. “Y-you too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Law: um wanna fuck / Kidd: yeah / Law: okay  
> [2] Kidd: um wanna top / Law: no you / Kidd: okay
> 
> Also laughing at the thought of law making scorecards for each of Baby's pretty snags. just evaluating the man meat very objectively, adding up points for shoulder to waist ratio and butt pertness, and then just writing BOOORING across each


	11. Endsummer night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Make the night last, loves. You know the sun never rises on better things.
> 
> Warnings: explicit sex, implied past abuse

 

It didn't take long for the selkie to come like that. The only advance warning was a catch in his breathing. And then he was shuddering and twisting under Kidd, open-mouthed but making no sound, and Kidd was hit with his own climax like a fucking rock to the head.

“Ah… Fuck!” He rested his forehead on Trafalgar's shoulder while spots exploded behind his eyes.

“Eustass… Eustass, Eustass…” the selkie was panting, still and spent.

“Mmn,” Kidd managed. He was limp too, draped heavily over the smaller body. Everything was oversensitive. But… good. He was almost giddy with how good it all actually was.

“...Eustass…”

“Mm?”

“...Mmm.”

Holy shit, even the selkie's little sounds were perfect. Kidd pressed another line of kisses to his collar bone and Trafalgar twitched.

“Ahhh, okay, too ticklish, done.”

“Fine,” Kidd rolled off with a little smile. They lay there next to each other, just breathing and feeling the sweat dry on their skin.

Also the… yeah.

“Oh my god it's like a fucking sea slug exploded,” Trafalgar complained, once he'd recovered use of his words. “This is your fault.”

“My fault? Half of that is your slug.”

“All your doing,” he smirked.

“...Yeah, heh.” Kidd felt around for a cloth or his shirt or something, but the selkie was suddenly tugging him to his feet.

“Up, let's go.”

“Let's? What? Go where now?”

“To clean off. We're gross.”

“Oh fuck naw—” Kidd protested, but let himself be dragged out of the cave and down to the water.

It was cold. Overhead, the last of the summer constellations were cycling low toward the horizon—the thief and the lamb. The moon was almost black. It reflected eerily on the surging night waves.

“C’mon. Water.”

“Not happening.”

“Oh my god, do humans not even bathe?”

Kidd stubbornly stopped ankle deep with his arms crossed. “Not in the middle of the night in the freezing fucking ocean.”

Trafalgar was already in the water. “The cold won't kill you. It's good for you.”

“And there's creepy stuff lurking in there that'll bite your dick off.”

“Hah! I guarantee I'm the only thing lurking in here for miles around.”

“Yeah.”

Trafalgar splashed him. “Get in the damn water.”

“Can't. Selkies will bite my dick off if I do.”

“Selkies will bite your dick off if you don't.”

“Well fuck.”

The selkie pulled him in and he went with a heavy sigh. He waded out until he was neck deep, Trafalgar swimming in lazy circles around him.

“C’mon, deeper, swim with me,” he put his arms around the human’s neck. “Promise I won’t drown you.”

Kidd pulled him close and felt long legs wrap around his waist. “I could probably get good and drowned all on my own.”

“Can’t you swim? You have arms and stuff. I can swim in this form.”

“Yeah but you’re a fish.”

“I am not!”

The selkie contented himself with just bobbing in the waves against his human, examining once again the scars he’d found so fascinating before. They stood out even more in the cold.

“You like those, huh,” Kidd couldn’t help but preen a little.

“On you, yeah. Can I try putting my mouth on them?”

“Yeah, whatever. Thought you didn’t like doing stuff with your mouth, though?”

“Well, just.” Trafalgar traced a long one with a light finger. “I dunno. I don’t want anyone doing stuff to my face. If you stay still though, it’s fine. Then it’s me doing stuff to you.”

“Mm…” Kidd closed his eyes while cool lips searched around his neck.

“You like this?” the selkie’s tongue flitted over a line crossing his cheek.

“Weird but yeah, heh.”

“How did you come up with that way of doing it? Just rubbing together like that.”

“I dunno. Just a thing people do.”

“You’ve done it before?” Trafalgar asked sharply.

“Uhhh, I’ve…” Kidd looked away, “done a lot of stuff.”

“So I’m not your first,” he seemed disappointed. Kidd wanted to tell him that he fuckin wished he had been.

“Well… you’re, um. You’re the first that I… actually…”

“That you…?”

“Thaaa… Iiiii… blblblblbl,” Kidd sank down until he was mumbling in the water. Trafalgar arched an eyebrow at him again and he came back up. “Next question,” he decided.

“Okay. You gotta answer this one, though. How old are you?” Trafalgar floated around so he was hanging onto Kidd’s back, sharp chin resting on his shoulder.

“…Seventeen?” Kidd tried.

“Are you? No you're not. Are you?”

“… … maybe actually sixteen?”

“For real?”

“… … …Fifteen. I’m fifteen.”

“What! But you’re taller than me and… and I've been taking orders from someone younger than me??”

“Yeah, haha.” Kidd got himself a sharp bang in the shoulder. “Ow. Why, how old are you?”

“Sixteen. Are all humans as tall as you?”

“Nah. I’m already taller than half the men in the village.”

The selkie was silent, and Kidd shifted around so they were facing again. He couldn’t see exactly, but Kidd was pretty sure he was semi-sulking. 

“Can't believe you're fifteen.”

“I’m sixteen in fish years, though.”

The selkie splashed him, but smiled.

 

* * *

 

 

Their teasing closeness was getting to Kidd despite the cold. The selkie was well aware of it, too—brushing up against him and running testing fingers along his length under the water.

Kidd got him up against one of the boulders sticking half out of the water. The selkie shivered and strained to meet his touch while Kidd worked a slow hand over his dick. He’d relaxed right into Kidd’s hands this time, no trace of nervousness.

“You can fuck me. I told you, I wanna.”

“Later. Don't have oil.”

The thought sent a thrill through Kidd, though. He could imagine how it'd be to just fuck him like this. He'd be gasping Kidd's real name this time, while he took his cock deeper and deeper. It’d feel so fucking good…

…for Kidd, though. Never for the one getting fucked. Maybe the selkie thought he wanted it, in the heat of things, but he didn't know what it was like. And anyway, making him want it was a million times better than making him take it. All it took to fuck someone was a dick and half a chance; getting them off took fuckin skill.

Kidd drew things out just long enough to make the selkie all impatient and demanding, and then lifted him up onto the boulder to finish him with his mouth. Trafalgar went still and quiet as he came. A smooth arch, holding himself taut against the pressure of his release. And then he was collapsing, gulping air and laughing.

“Whoa, did you just swallow it?” Trafalgar asked in astonishment. He sat up and dangled his feet in the water, on either side of Kidd.

“Mhm.” Kidd rested his head against the tan chest while he brought himself off too. Light fingers eased over his skin and he spilled into the water with a deep sigh.

“Doesn’t it taste bad?”

“Nah. You taste good.”

Trafalgar seemed to find that funny. “So now I know what you actually wanted me for all along. To fuckin eat me.”

“Heh! Yeah...”

They lapsed into quietness.

The selkie swished his legs in the water and gazed off toward the dark horizon and its waning constellations. He seemed to be listening to something in the slow surge of water on stone. His fingers wandered thoughtfully through Kidd’s hair. Everything was all gentle and stuff.

Kidd wrapped his arms around the selkie's waist and just stayed there, head to his chest. It was just now occurring to him that this feeling was contentment. Maybe happiness? Probably not. Maybe.

“You're all sleepy,” Trafalgar mused, turning his attention back to the human glomped onto his middle.

“Oh maybe that's it.”

“Or freezing to death.”

“Prolly, yeah.”

“Kay, cmon.”

They returned to the warmth of the cave and each other. Without saying anything about it, they arranged themselves back as they’d been before, the selkie’s head resting on his human’s shoulder and the human’s arm around his selkie’s back. They fell asleep almost instantly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe it's happiness; maybe it's ~hypothermia~
> 
> and I KNOW they're actually three years apart but whatever. The age difference this young was like yehhh


	12. Dreaming and waking II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The visions deepen.
> 
> No warnings.

 

This time the dream was clear, and he wasn't afraid. Law hurried down the beach, following the stars. The slaughtered lamb was setting low to his left, and the virtuous thief after it. Ascending at his right was the knife.

The thread was waiting for him where he knew it would be, trailing into the water. He wrapped it around his fist and began pulling on it. It was heavy, and slow going. But gradually, gradually, something swam into sight from the depths. He pulled and pulled, and the first piece emerged.

A hand, severed at the wrist.

Law could tell there was more further down the line, but it was too heavy for him to lift any more. He untangled the hand and held it up: Tan skin. A strange tattoo on the back like a cross and a circle. And clutched between two fingers: a needle.

 

* * *

 

 

There seemed to be no start and no end to the dream. Kidd found himself back in that underwater ship, sitting at the bow, watching the ocean floor speed past in a gentle blur. If he reached his hand down he could almost skim the tips of the waving seagrass. The longer he gazed at it the dimmer were his recollections of the surface. This was all there’d ever been. Seagrass… the sea… and nothing. Perfect.

And then a shadow.

Kidd sat bolt upright. There’d been a dark figure in the seagrass. He’d only caught a glimpse as the ship sped by, but he swore it’d been someone he knew. He didn’t know who, but its twisted face was familiar.

Another shadow, closer this time. It was reaching for the ship with desperate arms, mouth open.

Then one loomed directly in front of them and Kidd braced for an impact… but they went right through it. Kidd saw this one’s face as it sped by and disappeared into the darkness behind them.

“Uncle?”

There were more. All shadows, substanceless and reaching. Some he knew and some he didn’t. They increased until their reaching arms overtook the seagrass, and Kidd was sailing along on an undersea current of the desperate dead.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, short, super short, but a long chapter after this, hopefully this weekend.


	13. Good sons I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing fucks you up like family.
> 
> No warnings

 

When Kidd woke the selkie was looking at him, still nestled at his side. “Hi.”

“Hi. You haven’t killed me yet, huh.”

“Yeah if you died I’d get cold, so.”

“Yeah.” Kidd flopped them both over so Trafalgar was the one on his back with Kidd snuggled on top of him.

“Ugh,” the selkie complained at this. “Now it’s too hot. You’re heavy.”

“Mhm.”

“Get off.”

“Mhmmm.”

“I’m older than you, you have to do what I say,” Trafalgar warned him.

“Pff, ain't how shit wor—” the world did a spinny thing and Kidd found himself in a heap several feet away from Trafalgar, who was poised in a tight crouch.

“Okay well I’m stronger, so do what I say,” the selkie grinned widely.

“Like hell are you stronger!” Kidd tried to grapple him but got himself flipped the other way.

“Told you I let you take me down last night.”

A couple more failed attempts to get him back on the ground and Kidd was feeling pretty fucking put out. Not that he was gonna be all sore about it, cuz that would mean admitting he was getting his ass kicked. But he was definitely a little sullen by the time the selkie decided they were done and just sat on his chest.

“Yeah, great, very nice,” Kidd mumbled in defeat.

Trafalgar laughed and went to untangle his clothes from the heap that’d been tossed across the cave the night before. That was the third time the serious boy had laughed, and it made Kidd’s heart do stuff. He was almost inclined to forgive the fucker for being so goddamn cheerful about winning the grappling match.

Kidd caught and pulled on the trousers and tunic thrown his way. “You probably got crazy combat powers too. Cheap fucker.”

“Not even. I’ve just been, you know, training since I was six. Ugh, I’m so out of practice though, my form is all sloppy, right?”

“...No.”

“I mean, that second throw, you really—”

“Nope.”

“Almost had me there. Like, really close—”

“LEAVING.”

“Okay cool see you tonight.”

Kidd stomped a little on his way out of the cave. He was actually pretty late to the smithy. They’d kinda overslept and—

“Holy FUCKING SH—uh,” he stopped in his tracks as soon as he emerged into daylight. There was a  _ thing _ looking at him. “Hey Trafalgar?”

“Eustass-ya.”

“There’s a… thing here. For you.”

“What thing.”

Kidd eyed the humanoid mass of white-brown feathers and deeply unimpressed yellow eyes. “Some fuckin feathered freakshow, I don’t even—jesus!—fuck!” He backed away down the cliff wall as it beat its massive wings at him.

There was quiet swearing from the cave. “Fucking tell it I’m busy.”

“Nah I ain’t telling it shit. All yours.” The harpy-looking thing didn’t seem to be interested in following him, so Kidd figured it was safe to turn his back and get the hell out of there. This was probably the big sister, and he really didn’t wanna find out if Trafalgar had been serious about the splatting thing.

* * *

 

 

Law’s good mood turned abruptly to nerves. He pulled the leggings on and retied the belt and pouches, taking his time, but not too much. He was dying to hear news of his offer to the witch, but also mortified that Monet had fucking shown up RIGHT at this moment. On purpose, for sure. He got his indifferent act on straight and walked out into the sharp glare of the sun.

“So you got some, huh. Congrats.” Monet was perched on a ledge outside the cave, her half-feathered form as shocking as usual. She looked over the little marks on his chest and neck with amusement.

He’d forgotten about those. He felt his face heating again. “Oh my god shut up.”

“No judgement.” That was a fucking lie if he'd ever heard one. Monet shrugged and looked back down the beach to where the human had disappeared. “I suppose he is pretty, in a way. Not what I expected, though.”

“And  _ what _ was it that you expected. …Wait, don't answer that.”

“Ohhhhhh… I dunno.” she ruffled her feathers in mock thoughtfulness, “Tall, blond. Older.”

“Could you seriously not?” Law grumbled.

She giggled at his discomfort, but after a moment her amusement tapered off and she bit her lip. “Just don't get too taken in. Okay? Have your fun before shit falls down and we have to splat him.”

“No, Monet, it's not like that. No splatting.”

“Law. It's always like that.”

_ “Monet.” _

“You've seen Baby go through this enough. I didn't think you'd fall for the same tired shit.” The look she was giving him was stern.

God, Law hated that look. “Don’t you fucking scold me. This is nothing like Baby's bullshit.”

“So you're  _ not _ getting all gooey about literally the first man you bump into once you get outside the nest? Hm?”

“He’s not the… um…”

She examined her talons. “I mean, it's okay, firsts are a thing. Just have some self awareness?”

“Just mind your own business!”

“Hmph. You're the one who got me involved in your business to begin with. And you need me. Who else is gonna keep Doffy and Vergo clear while you get cozy with your human in broad daylight?”

Law squirmed. “I'll pay you back for all that stuff.”

“Aw, little brother… that's not the point.” She looked away, down the beach again. “Just remember that stuff like this—pretty little diversions—they don't stay. They don't care. They don't  _ matter.  _ Not like your family.”

“I know that.”

“He'll steal you,” she hissed, and the air around Law suddenly became freezing.

“No he won't.”

“I'll kill him if you go.”

She would, is the thing. Law held her gaze with that superior coolness he knew drove her crazy. But he did need her, so he didn't antagonize her. “I'm not going anywhere,” he reassured her. “Just leave him alone. And if splatting becomes necessary, I'm fully capable of doing it without your help.”

She scoffed and flapped her wings in irritation, stirring up the pebble ground. Frost flowered around her. But after a momentary burst of anger she settled back down and seemed to let the issue go.

“We’ll see soon enough,” she muttered, cracking her joints.

“I guess so. It's only another two days until I'm supposed to return. And by then I'll have the my Skin back. And…?” he prompted.

Monet nodded, still irritated. “And yeah. A lifted curse. This, you  _ do _ owe me for—that woman is terrifying.”

“So she’ll meet me, then!”

“Yes she will.” The little smile returned to Monet’s face. She tipped a small pouch into his hand. “You have a date with the Black Coast sea witch. She found the offer very attractive and she agreed to meet you tomorrow. Sunrise.”

Law considered the lock of dark hair inside the pouch, trying not to let his excitement cloud his judgement. “Okay. I'll need to get the human distracted…”

“And get the Skin.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “No waiting for the human, Law. If you want her to lift the curse you'll need to have the actual thing there.”

“Uhhh…”

“So. Do you want me to tell you where it is or are you still all, ahem, wrapped up in the romance of this benevolent captor thing.”

“I am not! Wait, where? How…?”

She shrugged a little too dramatically and set about grooming her pinion feathers again.

“Monet, where is it.”

“In plain sight, really. He's not very smart is he.”

Law would have a stinging rebuttal for this, but he didn't wanna seem like he was defending the human or anything. He was NOT getting taken in, he was just having a thing to himself for once. Was that so fucking bad?

“You’re enjoying lording this over me a little too much,” he accused.

“Yeah. Aw, but I'll tell you where it is, Little Law. Okay? After you do my hair again!” She broke into a toothy grin.

* * *

 

 

Law gazed up the towering black cliff face after Monet had gone, and grumbled to himself. She hadn’t exactly told him where the Skin was, only primly admonished him to “look up more.” Which was some typical Monet bullshit. Girl took every opportunity to make him feel like an idiot.

He started up the path where the human disappeared every day: a narrow crack in the cliff with rubble tumbled down in just the right way to create a natural stair. He had to climb almost straight up in some places, and then shimmy up a hidden rope for the final bit, but he gained the top without slipping.

On top of the cliff, the wind was hard, threatening to send him back over the edge. God, he hated heights. The clifftop sloped smoothly down and away before him, all black stone and waving, scrubby yellow grass. And in the distance below, a human village sprawled along the foot of a low mountain. There was one path leading away toward the village, but another that looped back along the edge of the cliff. He followed this one, trying not to look at the drop way, way down… Until the path seemed to veer straight over the edge. Law peered over. There was a long, narrow ledge hidden below, tracing a precarious path down to the right and around a bend. Fucking great… He steeled himself and clambered down backwards, feeling with a foot until he found the ledge. He had to lean close to the rock face to keep his balance. The wind unbalanced him, and he tried not to think of Baby's splatted human lover plummeting off that other cliff, arms reaching and reaching at nothing.

Finally he rounded the bend and came to a wide flat space sheltered under an overhang.  Law practically threw himself into its recesses with relief. There, folded up next to a stone… his Skin. Seeing it at last, he was flooded with sudden anger.

‘Plain sight,’ was it? For a fucking bird, maybe. It occurred to him that Monet could have just fucking come up and gotten the Skin for him, as easily as scratching her ass. But she knew how much he hated heights, and was probably hoping that this little exercise would make him resent Eustass. Which he was starting to, yeah. What kind of human just hung out up here inches from a deadly drop? And nevermind that, what kind of fifteen year old captured and kept a trained killer for company, and then left his only piece of insurance exposed and unguarded? Unstable, thrill-seeking ones with a fucking deathwish, that's what kind. Well Law wasn't a fucking carnival game for the bored and maladjusted. [1]

Law picked up the Skin and turned it over in his hands. It was as lifeless as it had been days before, but at least it was his again. Whatever that was worth now. And if he couldn’t get the curse lifted from it, it was worth worse than his life. He wouldn’t be able to shift with it, but others could still use it to control him. Like they were doing now, the human and the harpy both. All these messed up little games…

He checked it over carefully. Then he folded it up in a neat little package and tied it to his back before making the terrifying journey back down.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] lol yes he is


	14. Good sons II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was always a sure thing that at least one of Kidd’s little crimes would come ricocheting back.
> 
> Warnings: graphic violence, implied physical abuse by a parent, implied sexual violence

 

The first fucked up thing Kidd ran into on his usual commute down catastrophe corridor was the cat killer. And… and the cat killer's father, the Kizaru family patriarch. The towering man was one of eight councillors that led their little village, as well as chief justice and notoriously cruel asshole.

Kidd had a moment of utter, paralyzing panic before his brain registered the rest of the scene.

The cat killer and his brother (Kizaru's legitimate son) were hauling Bartolomeo between them, apparently taking him to the village center. Bartolomeo looked sullen and defiant. He saw Kidd but scowled and looked away. The elder of the Kizaru sons didn't seem to notice Kidd (maybe his nose was stuck too high in the air), and the cat killer didn't seem to notice anything around him at all. He just kept a tight grip on the young delinquent and followed his father with a blank look.

But Kizaru threw Kidd a menacing grin, and then passed him by without comment.

The group went away toward the village center, where a heavy bell was being rung to summon council. Kidd watched them go with a dry mouth, and a sense of relief that was probably premature.

 

* * *

 

 

The second fucked up thing he found in his path was the pack. But they seemed aimless without Bartolomeo. They were lounging around at the waypost trying to hit a crossing turtle with stones. None of them were getting it.

They stumbled to their feet and looked at each other when Kidd appeared.

“Fuckin ignore him,” Cavendish directed them from his slouched position atop the nearby stone wall. “Unless you all wanna join Bartolomeo in the council house.”

They didn't seem into the idea, so they sat back down and just watched Kidd pass by. Cavendish’s eyes were both threatening and pleading, which suddenly struck Kidd as funny.

He laughed and went on, counting his steps until he was sure they weren't following him.

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd made it to his uncle's smithy and figured he was clear of fucked up shit.

He heard voices instead of hammering as he approached. He paused outside. Two unfamiliar female voices were talking in low, urgent tones with Muriel and Genzo.

“We’ll talk payment after. Sit him here. Get the sleeve cut away.”

“Boy, come now, lift it just a bit…”

“It’s been a whole day. If it’s started to turn…”

So the smithy was a surgery for the day. His uncle was often called upon to set broken bones, having a strong arm and a stronger stomach. The patients usually didn’t want Kidd assisting, though, so he was probably off the hook. He paused, wondering if it'd be all day and he could just go back and hang out with the selkie or…

Muriel bustled out and caught him standing there.

“Boy. You’re needed in there.” Her round, stern face was grim, and she didn’t even bother with a disapproving look or a scolding over his lateness.

“They actually want me there?”

“No, but it’s going to take the two of you. Get. And keep your smart mouth buttoned.”

Kidd slouched into the dark interior and found two well-dressed women hovering around a small figure by the anvil. The patient was hunched in pain and breathing fast.

It was Drake. And he was  _ fucked up. _ The cut Kidd had made on his face was neatly stitched, and looked well on its way to healing. But other, fresh cuts and scrapes had not been treated at all. One of his eyes was swollen nearly shut. His left arm was tucked tight against him, the wrist at an odd angle.

Kidd stopped. Drake didn’t seem to notice him, but the women did.

“Genzo, I do not think  _ his _ help is required,” frowned the taller one—an imperious, elderly lady with a square face.

“It is, ma’am. Unless you wanna run and get another hand, but you say you want this done quiet.”

“It’s inappropriate. When he’s the cause of this trouble, I’ve no doubt.”

Genzo kept his tone conversational while he readied bandages and splints. “That what young Drake said?”

She pursed her lips. “No, he’s not said a word on the matter. But—”

“Kidd, the leather piece,” Genzo directed.

At the sound of Kidd’s name, Drake startled and looked around. He met Kidd’s eyes and just stared, suddenly agitated. Kidd flicked his eyes around to the other figures in the room—the disapproving crone pretending not to notice him now, Genzo preparing shears and cloth, and a small, young-ish woman who reminded Kidd of nothing more than a cornered mouse. An older sister? Not Diez's wife anyway. She was hovering by Drake’s shoulder, patting his other arm and trying not to look at anyone.

Kidd went to get the leather piece off the wall. A thick strip of hide with deep teeth marks. Genzo was cutting open Drake’s shirt to the elbow.

“Kidd,” Drake said suddenly, in a shaky voice. “You have to get somewhere.”

“See? The boy can’t even stand to have him here,” the grandmotherly one declared.

“Maam, think you’d best wait in the house with the missus,” Genzo suggested. “This won’t be pretty.”

The prim woman scowled but reconsidered the dark surroundings and panicked boy. “Girl, come,” she summoned the other as she turned to leave. The mousey girl snuffled, but patted Drake once more and followed the older woman out the smithy door.

“You’re on that end, I’ll set it,” Genzo directed Kidd toward Drake’s other side.

“Kidd, it’s my dad, just gets crazy and, and—” Drake started rambling.

“Yeah,” Kidd muttered, not looking at him.

“Your dad’s work, this?” Genzo questioned. Drake looked up at him but went quiet.

The forearm was twisted in the middle, the flesh around it swollen and purpling. Looked weirdly shortened. Genzo sighed and lifted the arm at the shoulder so it rested on the anvil. Drake went white and jerked away with a shout.

“Hold him,” Genzo ordered.

Kidd grabbed Drake’s other wrist and viced his whole upper body to the chair with his arms. Drake panicked at this and tried to shake him off, but there really wasn’t much a scrawny kid like him could do under a blacksmith’s hold.

“It only hurts for a second,” Kidd lied. It had only hurt for a second when Kidd had had his leg done, but that’s because he’d passed out.

“Bite this, boy,” Genzo offered the leather piece. Drake looked at him in terror, but then nodded and bit down on it. He stopped struggling and steeled himself.

No one sits still when their bones are being dragged through their own tissues, though. When you break both bones of the forearm like that, there’s nothing to stop the muscles from contracting so they pull the broken pieces alongside each other. If it’s bad, they start to twist and tear everything.

Genzo nodded to Kidd, then hauled the arm straight out on its tendons, like pulling back a slingshot. Drake screamed around the leather bit, and Kidd leaned all his weight into anchoring him. Genzo held it, then twisted it back into alignment, and Drake lost it, struggling and screaming. Another pull and a push and the bones were back in place. On the first try, too. The old man was a deft hand at bonesetting, though Drake was in no state to appreciate this.

The kid was delirious with pain while Genzo tied the splints on and folded the arm back against his chest. But he came around when they were tying it firmly in place with a sling and a few rolled pieces of cloth. He hadn’t passed out after all. Guy had grit.

“Kidd,” he tried again once Genzo had gone to get the ladies and discuss payment. “My dad, I didn’t say anything but he’s looking for you—”

“I know,” Kidd said shortly. He was packing away the bonesetting supplies and getting out the stuff for his usual work. Might as well get busy.

“He wants an honor price paid.”

“For what. Your face? He does worse himself, we all seen it.”

“For the insult.”

Kidd shrugged. “Tell him to come find me here, then. I ain’t running.”

“No but… Kidd, he doesn’t care if it’s  _ you _ paying it.”

Kidd stopped.  _ “Fuck...” _

“There’s nothing you can do. Just gotta hide til he gets some other thing in his head…”

“Fuck…” Kidd dropped everything and flew out the door, ignoring Drake’s rambled warnings.

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd sprinted up the road, but stopped as he got within sight of his house. He waited, listening. Nothing. Panic started to pump through his veins… nothing always ALWAYS meant the worst.

He padded onward, slowly and silently now. He was almost to the wall, and he thought he could hear… his mother talking, in a normal voice. Nami making her usual high-pitched sounds (no sound from Nojiko). Bustling and clanking of pots—all routine things.

They were okay.

“Boy,” a rough voice called from behind him. “We got ourselves a matter to discuss.”

Kidd turned slowly.

The Diez patriarch was everything his son was not—big, belligerent, powerful, with a neck and shoulders like a bull. He stumped up and Kidd briefly considered going for his knife…

But Kidd already knew how the math worked out here. This wasn't an unsuspecting nobody—Diez was wealthy, respected, a navy man in past days. And he was coming looking for a fight. Or something… a piece of whatever he could get. Drake was right, there was nothing Kidd could do about it.

“I let you off the hook once and look. Fuckin nerve of ya, and on the boy's face, for everyone to see, huh.” He was up in Kidd's face, rasping. The smell of strong drink rolled off him.

“Dunno what you're—”

Diez advanced on him, spitting and shoving. Kidd backed away in a circle, until he was retreating back down the hill, away from the house. Diez lurched after him.

“I got standing, reputation. And little shits like you can't stand that huh. Gotta jab and test. Gotta be put down—”

“I didn't touch Drake,” Kidd lied, pointlessly. Might as well try. “He'll tell you himself.”

That halted the man for a moment. But then he chuckled. “Doesn' matter. People think it's you that cut on him, put a knife to a Diez, made us look weak. Can't let things stand like that.”

They were almost out of sight of the house. Kidd swallowed and guided them back and back. Off the main path, toward the cover of the blackwood.

Kidd tried plan B. “You wanna cut for a cut? Take your shot. I'm right here,” he challenged.

“You think you could stop me, you little shit? You think you're a match for me? I ain't my weakling son.”

“I don't see ya trying, you old fuck.”

The bullish man pursued him to the tree line, then seemed to receiver his wits. “What’s one more nick on your worthless hide. Nah, boy. I came up here for repayment. An insult to my family, paid by yours.”

“We ain't got shit,” Kidd was almost panicking now.

“Heh. Can always take it outta your mom, then, can't I?” He grinned sickenly at Kidd. “All I want. Anything I want. It'd be my right, as the wronged party and all.”

He turned back toward the house, and Kidd threw out his last resort: “Not anything, you couldn't. Not to  _ her.” _

Diez stopped, seeming confused. Kidd watched the gears turn.

“What’re you—?”

“You do what you're thinking, to a woman that's not yours, alone with her babies... You'd get barred from council,” Kidd pushed. He started backing into the trees again, and Diez lurched toward him, uncertain but hooked. “You know how they are about girls, with Boa running things. And the men would call you cheap. Soft.”

“I ain't soft.”

“So what's a little challenge.” They were well inside the cover of the trees now. Kidd was backing blindly from tree to tree, over roots and brush.

“You saying I chase cock, you little faggot? Huh?”

Kidd put his hand back and felt a tree branch blocking the way.

“...Yup, heh.”

Diez lunged. Kidd ducked down to the side, knocking out the post that was holding the tree branch back. The branch whipped out over Kidd's head and hit Diez with a solid thunk… in the belt, though. Kidd had set the trap for smaller adversaries.

“You trying to take my goddamn dick off!?” Diez didn't even slow down—he slammed into Kidd and wrapped a massive hand around his jaw, squeezing until Kidd heard the hinge creak.

Kidd bit down on the hand as hard as he could. Broken teeth sunk through the skin and grated against knuckle. Like biting through the rind of a pumpkin. Diez bellowed and tried to shake him off, but Kidd held on. He threw wild punches at the larger man’s arms, face, anything he could reach, but couldn't land a good one. 

Diez finally just tightened his grip, picked him up by the face like he weighed nothing, and slammed his head back against the tree until he went limp. 

Kidd dropped to the dirt, stars bursting behind his eyelids.

Diez was cursing and clutching his bitten hand. “Animal! Fuck!”

“You don't got a dick, you got a hole big enough to fit the Royal Navy,” Kidd spat, getting to his knees. He got himself a blow in the jaw that made his mouth fill with blood, and he slumped to the ground but kept going. “Nnn… an… you let… every dog in the village stuff it…” 

“Does anything make you fucking shut up?” Diez asked incredulously, standing over him and clenching his fists.

“Costs extra.”

Diez snorted and shook his head, but then gave an ugly laugh. “You ain't soft, I'll give you that. Well, boy, you inspired my mean side. We'll do this your way.”

“Great,” Kidd muttered.

Diez grabbed his arm and hauled him to his knees again. “But you say another fucking word, a single fucking thing, and I snap your arms like twigs.”

Kidd sucked his teeth and spat a gob of blood to the side. He laughed to himself.

“Something funny?” Diez growled in warning.

Kidd shrugged and gave him a blood-filled grin. “So you wanna take it on your back or—aHKKk—!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boom, another chapter, Happy spring break. Almost got the next couple ready to go too. Can you tell I got a massive deadline coming up?
> 
> Next chapter is a 'comfort' chapter, not a continuation of that last scene, so it's relatively safe.


	15. Talk to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's something wrong with his human and Law doesn't know how to fix it.
> 
> Warnings: post-trauma, suicidal thoughts

 

Kidd had been sitting and staring at the horizon for a while, probably hours, before he remembered he had somewhere to be. The setting sun was burning a hole in his retina. He blinked. He was sitting on top of the cliff. He felt vaguely stiff, and something was wrong with his arms? Something was wrong with… 

He shook his head to clear it, and almost laughed. Something?  _ Everything _ was wrong.  _ He _ was wrong. He shouldn't even be alive still; or shouldn't have been born. It was all fucked, and the only fucking way to make it better is if he didn't fucking exist. 

He looked down the cliff.

And there was the selkie, sitting on a boulder in the sea far, far below, and gazing out at the horizon like Kidd was doing. Looked like he was waiting for something?  _ For him, _ Kidd realized. Trafalgar was expecting him back before dark. Kidd just stood and watched him for a while, not thinking about anything at all. A stone dropped onto the beach and Trafalgar looked around, but resumed his westward gaze when there was nothing.

The sky darkened and Kidd was still standing there. Below, the small figure hugged his knees to his chest and tucked his chin over them. 

Cold. The selkie was cold.

Kidd shook himself out of his blank reverie and went to meet him.

Law heard stone crunch behind him and smiled to himself. But then he caught the scent of injury, sharp and fresh.

“Eustass?” Law turned and looked the human over. He didn't look injured… just a scrape on his chin. He was standing at the edge of the water, staring at the foam curling around the stones and seeming lost.

“Hey…”

“Eustass-ya, what happened?”

“Ah, just. Sorry if you're. I'm gonna…” he gestured vaguely, then turned and retreated into the cave without even looking at Law. There was blood on the back of his head, almost invisible against his hair.

Law's inner alarms went off. He waited until the human was inside the cave, then got up and followed. Inside, Eustass was slowly, slowly piling driftwood into a conical shape for a fire. He seemed distracted, and he moved with his arms held stiffly and close to his body. Law went over and put a hand to his shoulder to stop him, and he flinched and grunted.

“Eustass.”

“Huh?”

“Sit on the mat.”

“I’m just… gonna make the fire. Getting dark or whatever.”

“Lemme do it. You're injured.”

“I can fucking do it, thanks.” He pulled away with another little grunt, and went to get more wood. He suddenly seemed conscious of his slowness, though, now that Law was watching him, and he got irritable. “The fuck is your problem.”

“You're the one with the problem,” Law argued. “You're fucking injured. Sit the fuck down so I can see.”

“Hah. You can get your little fix after. You'll be disappointed, though—there's not much blood.” Eustass pushed past him and knelt at the fire, but dropped one of the logs and cursed sharply. He sat there for a moment, breathing deeply through his teeth.

Law knelt next to him and put a hand to the scrape on his chin, “Lemme fucking—”

“Fuck off,” Eustass snarled suddenly, slapping away his hand.  _ “Leave.” _

“Stop it. You're—”

“Get the fuck away from me you dogfucking savage. I'll fucking kill you—”

“Eustass.”

_ “Go.” _

The selkie stubbornly stayed where he was and the human seemed to realize something. The venom drained from him. He looked at Law with a confused expression, and didn’t offer any resistance when Law pushed him toward the mat.

“Why are you still here?” he murmured.

“I said I'd stay,” Law replied.

Law built up the driftwood, filled it with dry grass, and struck flint until a spark caught. Eustass watched him for a while, then just lay back on the mat with a pained grunt and closed his eyes. Soon a good fire was going, and Law came to the matter of food. Easy enough. He padded outside and returned a short time later carrying a sizable fish by the gills.

He presented it to the bemused human. “Um. Here.”

“Thanks?”

“You should eat it.”

Eustass let out something like a laugh. He sat up and pulled Law into his lap, burying his face in his shoulder.

Law wasn't sure what to do from here, but he could smell the thinness of the human's blood. Probably hadn't eaten all day.

“Just take a bite.” He prodded him with the wall-eyed fish.

“Can't eat right now.”

“Eustass-ya, what did you…?”

“Some trouble caught up with me. Nothing too huge.”

Law let the fish thing go for now. He felt around the back of the human's head for the wound. It didn't seem like it was bad enough to make him so messed up… Law started to let his mind drift as he focused on the texture of blood caking coarse hair. He could sense three sites of injury: three sharp flashes of pain, blood pooling in the tissues under the skin…

“Feels like a tree? How did a tree hit you three times in the head?”

“Nono, hey,” Eustass startled and shook Law's hands free. “No looking.”

“I can probably fix it easy,” Law insisted.

“That’ll heal on its own. Can you just leave it?”

“Are your arms broken? The bones?”

“I… guess. I said not to look.”

Law had barely needed to brush his fingers over Eustass’ arms, even covered by his tunic, to get the sensation of a hand viced around the upper arm, sudden pressure, bone straining and fracturing.

“Eustass, let me fix the breaks at least.”

“You'll use too much blood again,” the human refused.

“Nah, I have a better sense of the cost now. And if I use too much you'll just keep me warm until I grow it all back, right?”

Eustass let out a breath. “Yeah… I'll keep you warm.”

“Okay. Lemme see.”

Law helped the human pull off his tunic. He couldn't raise his arms above his head without gritting his teeth. How he'd gotten down the fucking cliff path like this was a mystery to Law. He'd probably made it worse. The shirt came off and Law smoothed over the sharp shoulders again before letting his hands fall to the upper arms.

He couldn't feel the rupture with his fingers so he almost had to… listen? It was different from a surface injury, seeming to echo from some distant place rather than screaming in Law’s face. But it was still chilling to sense. There was the pressure and then a snapping sound, one arm and then the other. Like a green sapling crushed underfoot in winter, splintering but not separating. And below that, blinding pain, nausea, disgust. Law retched from it.

Eustass pulled back a little, “Don't look at anything, though. I don't want you to see.”

“I’m not. I can't actually see what happened, just what it feels like.”

“I don't want you to have to feel it either.”

“I'm almost there, just hold on.”

The way to heal bones seemed to be the same as flesh, but slower. Flesh is already pliable, you just need to nudge it together. Bone, though… it cracks, crumbles, splinters into grit and shards, and you have to refit it all piece by piece.

Law held all the pieces together and fed measured amounts of his own lifeblood into the cracks. “Fit, mend, fit… mend…” he murmured to the pieces, without really hearing himself. 

The blood budding in Eustass’ marrow seemed to catch on quickly, and the bones almost sealed themselves. The breaks smoothed out, the inflamed tissues knitted together overtop, and everything got quiet. Law was a little shaky, but nowhere near as bad as last time. He was getting better at this.

“Okay. Is it better, Eustass?”

Eustass raised and bent his arms experimentally, flexed the fingers, then placed them around Law’s shoulders. “It's better, yeah.”

It clearly wasn't though—not everything.

Law ran his fingers though the blood-caked hair again, but didn't try to heal the wounds there even though he wanted to. Injury still emanated from his human and it was making the selkie anxious.

“Eustass-ya, I don't… I don't know what else to do.”

“It’s okay, you fixed it.” Eustass laid back on the mat and Law lay down with him, face to face, pulling the blankets over them both. The arm was whole again, and warm around Law's waist.

“Just tell me what you need. Please."

“Just.” Eustass shifted and sighed. “...Talk to me?”

“About what.”

“About… what it's like under the water.”

“Okay. It's, um, like above the water, but there's fish, and you're not stuck to the bottom all the time.”

“Heh.” The human laughed a little. “Sounds good.”

“Yeah... Yeah, and swimming is amazing.” Law usually sucked at talking and the whole ‘reassurance’ thing, but water, he could talk about. “It’s like flying but slow. Everything is slower and quieter down there, even sound and light. There's currents, which are like wind but heavier. And the plants and everything aren't just stuck to the ground, they're all hovering at different depths at different times of day, like moving islands. Or clouds.”

“Is there sea grass?” Eustass wondered.

“Yeah, lots, different kinds.”

“Does some of it look like arms? Like… hands, that try to grab you?”

Law frowned. “That's… where did you hear that?”

Eustass shrugged, “I guess just something someone told me about once.”

“Another selkie?”

“No, I've never met any other selkies. Just… uh, some old lady or, dunno. Somewhere.”

Law was silent for a while. “There’s no actual sea grass like that. But there's stories about it. Not… not happy stories.”

Eustass laughed again. “There are no happy stories. Tell me about the sea grass like arms.”

“My selkie mom told me about it, when she got near her end. But you're not supposed to talk about it too much, in case the… the already-gone are listening. It's said to be one of the trials that sea shifters face on their final path. All those who didn't make it are there, trapped forever, reaching for you, and if you hesitate you'll be pulled down with them.”

“What's the final path?” Eustass asked, like he didn't already know.

_ Death. _

“I don't… it's not good to say it out loud. You know what I'm talking about.”

Law was suddenly feeling the cold keenly, and he shuffled up closer to Eustass. 

The human actually seemed to be feeling better. His breathing had evened out and the tightly-wound pain and violence in his frame had eased. He felt Law shiver, though, and hugged him closer.

“Did you use a lot of blood?” the human worried.

“Just a little,” murmured Law. “It'll be back in a few hours. Your own blood did most of the work.”

“Okay…” Eustass was fading into sleep.

Law wasn't far behind. But his conscience was needling him. “Eustass-ya, I uh… I have to do something in the morning, okay?”

“Mm.”

“I gotta go somewhere at dawn. So don't wait for me when you get up.”

Eustass sighed and put both arms around him. “Yeah… I know.”

“I'll come back as soon as I can.”

“It's okay, you don't have to.”

“I'll be back,” Law insisted.

“Trafalgar, it's okay.”

_ What if it's not, _ thought Law, and shivered again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aw fuck made myself cry… Kidd can't die because then Law would get cold fuuuuck… that angst. Suggested music: NIN, The Great Below.
> 
> Next chapter will be creepy-violent, Law-centric, Dark Robin. One after will be traumatic-violent, Law-centric, Doffy.


	16. A measure of tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Law goes to make his offer to the sea witch, and she makes him an offer in return.
> 
> Warnings: Graphic violence and injury
> 
> Suggested music: NIN - The Mark Has Been Made

 

Law’s finely-tuned inner clock woke him an hour before dawn, just as the sky was starting to lighten. The human was so warm, everything was so perfect right here. He tried to slip out of Eustass’ arms without waking him. 

A hand caught him as he was getting up, though. Sleepy eyes were cracked open but unseeing—not truly awake. Law pulled his arm gently out of Eustass’ grip and the hand dropped back to his side. Law watched him for a moment, then pressed a light kiss to his slightly parted lips. 

The selkie rose and walked silently out of the cave and into the cold predawn fog.

 

* * *

 

 

Law hurried down the beach as fast as he could. The sun was about to rise and he wanted to be far, far away from the cave when he met the witch.

He held his Skin in one fist, and the little lock of the witch's black hair in the other. A gesture of trust, for her to give him a piece of her own hair—such a thing could easily be used against her by a skilled spellcrafter. Which he really really wasn’t… so maybe it wasn't so much a show of goodwill as a way to suggest how completely she outclassed him. Clearly, even with a piece of her, he was absolutely no threat. 

His stomach turned as this sunk in. His Skin felt cold and heavy in his hand.

The selkie stopped as light spilled over the top of the cliff and struck the waves far offshore. The fog far above him lit up, though he was still in the shadow of the cliff. He put the hair on a flat stone near the water and sheltered it while he struck flint. A single spark sent it all up in flames and the ashes swirled up into the glowing sky.

He waited, and watched the shadow of the cliff shrink and shrink until it met the shoreline.

And then it opened, like a black eye: A hole in the water. It widened and became a narrow tunnel leading down along the seabed and into the dark depths. Law stared into it but couldn't see anything. He hesitated only a moment, then followed it down.

 

* * *

 

 

He walked until he forgot to count his steps, until time was confused and there was no light at all from above. Just the weird blue glow that always seemed to hover at the sea floor—cold dregs of spent daylight.

The Black Coast sea witch was waiting for him just a little beyond that. She was seated before a flat rock on which was set two copper cups and a black kettle. She gave him a patient smile and gestured for him to sit across from her. Law couldn't make out her exact features in this light. Was she from the old world or the new world? She had dark hair like his, but light-colored skin like Doffy and Cora. A forest of tentacle-arms spread from the Skin at her shoulders, drifting and waving even in the air-filled space. She looked like a young woman, but from what he knew of her kind, she might be centuries old and still look like a child. Witches could be shifter or human—anyone with a gift, and a willingness to pay and pay and pay the price of it.

Usually with others’ blood.

Law stayed standing.

“You've grown since I last saw you,” she observed calmly.

Law didn't know how to take this. “Uh. Since five days ago?”

“Mmhm,” she looked him over. “In depth.”

That was clearly some pseudo-mystical bullshit meant to intimidate him, so Law said nothing. They both knew why he was here.

She smiled as she analyzed him. “There are new marks on you.”

“Your work.”

“Not all of it. You've used the black knife.”

Law’s hand shot to his neck. “It… was used on me, yes.”

“I see. I wondered why it wasn't returning to me anymore. I suppose it prefers you now.”

“I'll give it back to you,” Law blurted. “And the cuffs. If you just—”

She held up a warning hand and Law stopped.

“I am a firm believer in protocol,” she scolded gently. She poured drink from the kettle into both cups.

Law hesitated, but he knew that this situation was entirely out of his control. And Cora had brought him up properly after all; he should make use of his manners. He sat across from her, legs folded under him. He accepted the cup she passed him and waited.

“Your health,” she raised her cup slightly.

“Yours,” he murmured and drank.

It was sweet, thick, and… salty? Really good. He finished his cup. When he set it down she was still looking at him, her cup only partially drained.

“Good?” she asked.

“Yeah… uh. Thanks.”

“More?”

“Okay…” Protocol dictated that he couldn't refuse, but it was also delicious. She refilled his cup, and he found the presence of mind to offer some polite flattery. “You are renowned for your skill. You must come from a powerful family.”

“I don't remember them,” she said simply. “Have more.”

“Um. Then you must have had a good teacher.”

“I taught myself.”

“Uh.” Well Law was fucking this up. “Then… then the best teachers truly are also the best students.”

She gave a surprised little laugh at that, clearly pleased. “An apt aphorism! Thank you, darling.” She filled the cup again.

“This stuff is amazing,” he tried to drink this cup more slowly.

“Ah, I'm glad! I knew it. I just knew you'd have a taste for it.” She emptied the kettle into his cup. “I was acquainted with your family, once, did you know that?”

“Dof—uh, Donquixote?”

“Nono. Him, only by reputation. And Rocinante, only briefly. I was sorry to hear of that one’s death.”

“That…” Law swallowed back bitter words. He wasn't here to make hot-headed accusations about the circumstances of Cora's murder. “Um. Thank you.”

“But I meant that I knew your other family, from before you were stolen.”

“...Did you indeed.”

She was clearly lying. Law hadn't been stolen; he’d been rescued.

“I made them an offer, once. To have you sent to me for tutelage. But, as we know, someone else got there first.” She leaned back, voice betraying irritation now. “A waste. You were not meant for warrior arts, and now you’re well past the ideal age to begin instruction.”

Law didn't know whether to be offended or not. Let alone whether to believe any of this. “I'm the best of my brothers and sisters at any form of combat,” he defended himself.

“I’m simply thrilled to hear it,” she sounded bored. “But among Donquixote's little collection of gifted children, stolen from their cradles… did any of you actually manage to become mages? Even adepts?”

“Okay I'm lost.”

“Or just common  _ thieves _ and  _ thugs.” _

Law looked down at his cup, confused and angry. The unknown liquid pooled dark and thick in the bottom. A strange thought occurred to him.

“What, um. What is this drink?”

She pushed her own half-full cup toward him. “Take the rest.”

“I think I'll have to decline—”

“You don't have a choice.”

That was true. He raised the cup to her, holding her gaze. “Your health and mine.” He downed it in one swallow and wiped his mouth.

“It’s what I subsist on whenever I find myself performing some heavy lifting, spellwise. A fortifying tea of various herbs, steeped in tears. Much more elegant than blood.”

“Oh…” he wiped up a drop of the stuff with his finger, and it came away dark. “Fuck.”

“And you've had just about the amount that it took for me to craft your curse.” She gestured at the two little copper cups and the black kettle in front of him. “Provided out of my own courtesy. Do you see the way of these exchanges? I would have given you all of the stolen items freely, with blessings, had you come to me in the right manner. And we'd have both come out of it richer.”

“I'll restore them to you. It can all go back to the way it was—”

The witch cut him off, “It doesn't work in reverse. You've put us in a difficult spot, young selkie.”

Law pushed, “I’ll get you your knife and bracelets and—”

“I don't want them.”

“...What?”

She shrugged. “The little bracelets, you can keep. And the knife won't stay with me now anyway. It's a demon blade. It goes where it wishes, assists or interferes in one's crafting as it sees fit. And it seems to prefer your blood to mine, now that it's had a taste.”

“It…? But I'm no one, why would a, a demon blade want me?”

“Interesting, isn't it,” she was suddenly up close to him, tentacles snaking out to trap him. She examined him with her strange eyes. “One of the only reasons I agreed to this little meeting… I wanted to see…” she scanned his hands, top and bottom, “…if there was anything left.” 

She held open the lid of his eye with a barbed tentacle, and leaned close to examine the pattern of his irises. Her own eyes were solid, piercing blue, the pupils like long bars all the way across. Her lips were black.

“I'm sure this is a breach of protocol,” Law managed.

She smiled again. Her tentacles withdrew, but she stayed sitting close.

“I’m willing to accept the proposal conveyed by your sister,” she said at last, “to restore your Skin.”

Law’s heart leaped, but… wait. “But you don't want the knife or the cuffs?”

“No. The insult of their theft can’t be reversed. But this additional enticement your sister spoke of…  _ very _ attractive. Charmingly old fashioned, and I do have a soft spot for such things.”

“Such things?” Law was suddenly struck by a strange fear. He stood slowly. Monet had offered the witch something else. Without telling him…

“This human. Your first love, is it? That's perfect. So wonderful. You only get one ‘first,’ after all.”

_ Eustass. _

“He's not my… he's just…” Law looked around frantically but the passageway had closed. There was no exit, just swirling walls of water and the glowing seabed.

“Well whatever he is to you, then, it'll do. I can taste the potency from here.”

“What will you do with him?”

“Consume him. What else would I do?” She seemed to pick up on his reluctance, and offered a concession. “Hm. Perhaps I can do it a piece at a time, as a favor, if you'd like to continue with him a while longer? Is that better? I know you haven't had much time together.”

“It’s… that's. No. I mean. What if I've changed my mind?” Law was still scanning the walls, looking for an escape.

“Then there's no deal, obviously. Your Skin will remain detached. You'll be landbound, useless to your family. I suppose then you could be with your human lover… For as long as that lasts. And darling, the first never lasts.” She watched him pace. She seemed to be trying to be gentle with him? Kind of… motherly? But it came out with all the warmth of a spider wrapping its prey in silk. “There will be other loves after him, as many as you want. And you'll lose him eventually anyway, so why not have it be to your advantage?”

“Why don't I give you some other one, then.”

“No. The offer was for your first. Delivered to me whole, yourself.”

“I didn't think—” he blurted, stopping his pacing, and she shushed him soothingly.

“Ohhh, I know, little one. But here: a lesson. That pain you feel, at the very thought of handing him over, and the tears I know you'll shed to yourself until you forget him, as you quickly will…  _ That _ is what gives value to blood. Remember that when you work your craft.  _ That _ is the price I'll accept to return your Skin to you, and no other.”

Law clutched his head and stared at the closed walls. “I… I need to think.”

“Of course. You may have until sunset tomorrow. Now.” She picked up the kettle and cups, and seemed to fold them away into a hidden part of her Skin. “I have a proposal for you as well. I think you'll be pleased with it. I have high hopes myself after this pleasant little meeting. But I'd like to ascertain a few things… first.”

Something in her voice made Law spin back around to face her, just in time to see barbed tentacles shoot out. “Fuck!”

He dodged them and took off along the curve of the wall, even though he knew there was no exit. He parried another tentacle strike with the blade of his hand, and felt a slice open to the knuckle. He gasped and kept running, leaving a trail of drips.

“Oh come now, this isn't a trial of your combat skills. Hold still.”

“I'd rather not get killed!” he panted as he dodged.

“I'm not going to kill you, little one. Just…”

She sent a twisting spike of many arms bursting out and almost pinned him in place. It shattered the rock they'd been sitting on… definitely would have killed him. Then she was high above Law, hovering like a spider on her tentacles. She sent one darting whip-like toward him, but Law saw the feint and moved with it as it went to circle him. He sliced down with lightning speed, using a piece of the shattered stone.

It glanced off, making a metallic ringing sound and sending up sparks. The stone broke.

“Shit!”

“Do you see why it saddens me that this is the sum of your training?”

She wrapped the long tendril around him and he felt his ribs creak. The tentacle flexed like flesh, but not any flesh he knew. It was like iron. Like something Eustass had told him about… heating and hammering and folding and hammering… it was like a living blade.

_ “Be brittle,”  _ he instructed the iron flesh. _ “Break.” _

The tentacle flexing around him stiffened, bent, and wrenched apart. There was an unearthly shriek like a million nails on slate—the witch screaming and the tentacle tearing. It didn't bleed. He shook loose from from the writhing thing but a dozen others caught him.

“No! Damn it! Be—” a final tendril viced around his head and stifled his words.

The witch was shaking, but standing. She was angry. Was she? “Good, haha… nngh … hahahaaa, that was very nicely done, young one.”

Law watched her pick up the twitching end of her arm and fix it back in place. There was a glow and it was reforged. She stood for a moment, getting her breath under control.

And then she was all calm composure and vague amusement once more. “No one’s managed to injure me in a very long time. I'll concede that your combat instincts are well developed.”

Law inclined his head at her in sarcastic thanks. He tested the give of the tentacles wrapped around his arms and legs. Utterly unmoving.

“That's not what I wished to evaluate, though.”

A tentacle suddenly wrenched his head back as another dragged a knifelike barb across his throat.

The pain was blinding but he couldn't scream. The witch dropped him in a heap and he struggled upright. He put a hand to his throat… it was open all the way across, like a second mouth. He could feel cold air rattling in through it when he breathed, and blood slicking his lungs.

“Hkkhh! Yyouuuuhkkk!”

“Hm.” The witch withdrew her many arms and leaned down to watch him shudder and claw at his neck. As dark blood oozed down his chest and onto the floor, she frowned in disapproval. “I suppose I forgot to take into account the cost of that little surprise curse… But still. I’ve given you plenty to drink. So, young blood mage:”

She settled back on a piece of the stone and rested her chin on a fist. She met his glare of shock and pain with a smile of gentle encouragement.

“Heal thyself.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This school deadline got me freaked the fuck out, can you tell? Can only write like this when avoiding things. One more chapter, and then you should all tell me to get the fuck back to work.


	17. The virtuous thief I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Law escapes the witch’s test and then the warlord’s ire, before finally getting where he needs to be.
> 
> Warnings: Doffy, predatory/abusive parent, threat of rape, torture (cutting), graphic violence

 

Law emerged from the sea like a walking corpse. He heard the passage close with a watery rush behind him, and he was left alone on the beach, dead Skin in hand. His throat was still slowly, slowly stitching itself back together. He could feel cold air leaking into the gaps when he breathed. God, every breath felt like drowning. But he’d come out of the ordeal alive… to his own astonishment and the witch’s great satisfaction.

Law began walking. The sun wasn’t even above the cliffs yet—it was still early morning. He hadn't been gone that long, after all. But it felt like a lifetime, like everything had changed since he'd gone down into the water. Maybe he'd been gone days instead of hours. Maybe Eustass wouldn't even be waiting in the cave anymore. Maybe Law wouldn't have to make the choice between having him and having his Skin restored. Or the choice that loomed just beyond that one—whether to accept the witch's parting offer to study with her, and learn to make such sacrifices over and over and over.

His cut throat closed as he walked. It’d been a clumsy spell, and he’d never tried to heal something that big before, but it was still working.

He wondered who’d cried all the tears in that kettle, and what over.

He didn't bother feeling surprised when he rounded a bend and found Doffy walking toward him. The warlord was ambling along as if he'd just been out for a stroll, with his loose linen clothes and white albatross Skin billowing gracefully. 

His grin sharpened as he took in Law's rough state. “Little one, you look as though you've found some trouble.”

Law did something he'd never dared to in front of Doffy before, and laughed. He couldn't help it. It came out like a gargling rasp—vocal cords not yet intact.

“I hhhve,” he croaked, and then cleared his throat. “I have.”

Doffy ambled up, and then past and around him, and Law was reminded again of how impossibly tall he was. Far taller than Eustass, Vergo, anyone. Law only came up to his chest.

“Much as I relish its effects,” Doffy mused, taking in the rivulets of blood drying all over Law, “I find myself concerned about a number of things. Such as the state of your Skin, little selkie. And the matter of this new… friend of yours.”

Eustass? Fuck… Had Monet told Doffy about him too? Was she really that jealous? For fuck sake… why couldn't Law just have this ONE fucking thing? It was like the moment he wanted something for himself, everything conspired to punish him for it. His head hurt. He grasped for the words to defend himself.

His Father probed, “Nothing to say? Please, Law. I'd like to hear this from your own lips first. Accusations are so petty.”

“I was hit by a curse, when I was escaping the witch after the knife mission. It made my Skin reject me,” Law stared at the ground and kept his voice neutral.

“I see. And so, that brings us to the second part. The betrayal. Or perhaps I’m mistaking the situation?”

“I've never, never betrayed you,” he said honestly. “Would never.”

“And yet, here I find myself, drawn by strange whispers. Your sister, feeding Vergo some line about enemy scouts at our far border. No trace of any such thing, though we scour the skies. And what should I find when I follow the tongue and not the lie… but a seal sacrifice, taken in the way of the depraved witches we so despise, and laid at the door of our rival. And so, my selkie, we come to the matter of the betrayal: You and the witch.”

Law was still letting this sift through his brain. The witch. Doffy didn't know about the human after all?

“Law. Tell me,” the albatross rumbled.

“I… went to the witch, yes. To bargain for my Skin…”

“And what was it that you were going to offer her?”

“Just…” he swallowed. Doffy could smell a lie on him so, so easily. “Her things back. The bracelets and… the knife… I was going to give her the knife back.”

“Is that all, Law?”

He looked over at his mentor in confusion and met his mirror-like black eyes. He shouldn't do that without being directed to, but. “Yes. I didn't know what, um, what else—”

“So it's not the case that you went intending to switch allegiances? To become a student of blood magics and twisted, dishonorable things. To abandon your family for the promise of tainted power.” The Warlord's eyes were hard but his smile stayed in place.

“No! _No.”_

“I know what she wants, Law. And I want to protect you from it. What did she ask? Speak truth to me, selkie, or I will cleave your tongue again.”

“She.” Two truths. “I went to her with an offer of her things back, no more. She didn't want that.”

“Good. Those are truths. Go on.”

Then three more truths, but out of order. And unspoken between them was the lie. “She offered to take me as a student. I refused. She attacked me.”

He held his breath but Doffy was nodding, seeming satisfied. “And you escaped once again?”

“She let me go.” Truth. Law shuddered at the memory… once he’d collected himself enough to clasp his hands over his cut throat and croak out some words to stop his blood draining out, she'd patted his hand like a doting aunt and told him that reliance on words in spellcrafting was a weakness. That this had been a lesson as well as a test. Then her offer: to liberate him from Doffy and take him on as a student. After he’d handed over the human, of course.

Then she’d dismissed him as though bored, and given him her name as a parting gift—Robin.

“She seemed content just to toy with me for a while,” Law reflected uneasily.

“Oh, my selkie,” Doffy was all softness now, a gentle hand on his face and massive feathered wings reaching around him. 

Once, this would have soothed Law (a long time ago), or at least cowed him (more recently), but now it made him… impatient. He was so fucking tired of these power games. He stared straight ahead and refused to turn his face up at the nudge under his chin.

“Give me your face,” Doffy warned.

“I’m not whole,” Law argued. “Let me heal first.”

“I like you better this way.”

“My throat has been fucking ripped out. I need to go and heal.  _ Please.” _

Doffy frowned for a split second and drew back in surprise. Then he grabbed Law’s chin and turned it up forcefully. “Your throat could be open and spilling out your last drops of life and I’d still expect you  _ look _ at me, selkie.”

Law looked at him stonily and didn’t reply.

“You know this is the least of what I could take from you. You’re promised to me. Mine. Any time,” he breathed in Law's face, all looming menace and manic grin.

“And you promised that you’d wait until I’m of age,” Law reminded him quietly, his heart thudding painfully but his voice even. “You agreed that this should be done according to the proper protocols.”

“So I did,” Doffy looked him over in consternation, as though searching for the source of this new defiance. “But I think I’m inclined to offer you a lesson instead. That promises are simply words,”  he shoved Law’s face away suddenly and sent him reeling back, “unless one has the power to hold the other to it.”

Law knew this already. But he’d had many lessons that day, including that he  _ wasn’t _ powerless.

Without being aware of it at the time, Law had picked up on a number of little things from the witch, just from being in close proximity to her for that short period of time. Like the idea that flesh could be as solid and unyielding as iron. This little idea had been turning over and over in his mind, and he thought he knew how it might work.

So, when Doffy went to force him to the ground, Law called upon his diminished reserves of blood and made his body as dense and immovable as iron. It wouldn’t hold up to Doffy’s full strength, of course, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

Doffy gripped Law’s arm. And then for and shoved at his chest. With a growl, he stepped back to circle Law, like a thwarted predator uncertain of what it held in its jaws.

“What is this. Blood magic? From the witch?”

Law cracked his knuckles, trying out the feeling of iron flexing, heavy but fluid under his skin. “Yeah. Just something I picked up when she wasn't watching. Like the bracelets, I guess.”

“Is. That. So.”

Law shrugged. He stayed standing, not offering any challenge, but not yielding either.

“Are you denying me, Law?”

“No. I’m just showing you that your promised one is not completely useless.”

Doffy… seemed to find this funny.

“I see! Haha… My selkie, you are a treasure.” He stopped his pacing and chuckled like Law had told an unexpectedly good joke. He was abruptly back to good humor. “I will relent, as you wish.”

“Thank you,” Law murmured, not relaxing in the slightest.

“But I’m afraid I must still address the insubordination as such.”

“Of course…” Law was never going to get out of some form of punishment. But the disciplinary route was far, far more welcome than the other way. Law let his eyes fall shut. His iron flesh was returning to normal already—he couldn’t sustain it any longer. His blood was getting so, so thin.

Long fingers spread under his jaw and held it open, as a thumb pushed its way into his mouth. It slid in obscenely. Made him fucking sick… Law focused on not moving, even as something sharp cut into the back of his tongue, searing like he was holding fire in his mouth. It sliced down the length of his tongue, and Law could feel the meat parting all the way down to the tip.

This wasn’t a hard test to pass. He’d done it before, and each time his tongue had sealed back up within days, even without his new healing abilities.

“Good. You are so, so strong. And mine. You are mine, right, Law?” Doffy murmured gently, when it was all done and blood was dripping out of Law’s mouth to spatter on his feet.

“Ye-hhs,” Law lied.

“Are you ready to come home now, my selkie?”

“T-t-domorrow. Hhseven -ays in i...hhhsolation, I s...said. I don’ make idle promisehhs.”

Doffy smiled.

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd waited in the shadow of the black cliffs, sitting on a stone, watching the sea. It was cold and still, morning fog hovering over the water, the sunlight cooled to that bluish hue that means autumn and rain are coming. His mind was mostly blank. If he’d been paying attention, he’d notice how sore his entire body still was, how blood was still caked in his hair and sourness still filled his mouth. So he didn’t pay attention.

But there was one thought that kept intruding with its devastating finality: the selkie was gone.

Kidd had risen sometime after dawn to find himself alone, no trace of Trafalgar except the fish he’d brought last night, still uneaten and starting to turn. Kidd had climbed the cliff to check the hiding place, and yes, the Skin was gone, so the selkie was gone too. He’d known it would happen since the night before, anyway, when Trafalgar hadn’t gone away when ordered to. He’d stayed, of his own volition, for one more night. And that was far more than Kidd could have asked of him, after stealing his Skin and everything.

But now the selkie was gone… That thought nagged and nagged, shot through with images of the stillness and slowness of the underwater world, and the grasping of sea grass arms.

He heard stone crunch behind him. He didn’t care.

“Eustass-ya?”

Kidd’s heart leapt so high it punched him in the throat. He turned… and it plummeted so hard it punched him in the stomach.

“Trafalgar, the fuck??”

The selkie was covered in dried blood from the mouth down. He was dragging his Skin in one hand, not seeming to realize that it was trailing in the water. 

He gave Kidd a rueful little smile. “Hey, sorry I left like that.”

“It’s okay… Um…”

Trafalgar waded out to him, unsteady on his feet but starting to smile for real now. “Did you eat the damn fish?”

“What?” Kidd jumped up and caught him as he reached the stone and stumbled. The selkie laughed and let himself fall into Kidd's arms.

“The fucking fish. Did you eat it or are you still fucking starving yourself?”

A side effect of not eating for a day was that Kidd’s brain was not keeping up with things. He suspected it was a fucking weird conversation anyway. “Um. No, the fucking fish is a bit… off…  _ why _ is all your blood on the outside?”

“Oh, a witch put it there. My dad helped. Anyway I came back to tell you to eat the fucking fish.”

Trafalgar passed out.

Kidd gave his brain a moment to process all this, but it was too fucking much, and there was an unconscious, blood-soaked selkie slumped against him, threatening to slide down into the water. He got Trafalgar’s limp form gathered up in his arms… and his head rolled back to reveal a gnarled gash across his throat. It was stitching itself together, layers of flesh inching slowly over exposed tendons. Kidd shuddered and looked away. There was only room for one thought in his head right now… the selkie had come back.

He carried him into the cave once more, and laid him on the mat before getting down to the work of keeping them both alive.

_ The selkie had come back. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now I'm crying about fish.
> 
> To clarify, Monet didn't actually tell doffy about kidd. She's not trying to get law killed, just his human.


	18. The virtuous thief II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Law wants to make sure some part of him stays out of Doffy’s reach forever.
> 
> Warnings: post-trauma, explicit sex, painful sex, sex that is consensual and wanted but still happens under bad circumstances and bad emotional states and fucks everyone up (is there a word for that?)

 

Law woke in the cave once more. His blood-caked clothes were gone and he was clean, wrapped in blankets. 

Eustass was sitting by the fire, also washed clean of blood, poking something in the kettle with a stick. He saw Law blinking and teased him, “That’s the third time I’ve carried you over that fuckin threshold. Pretty sure we’re married now.”

Law laughed and reached for him, and he came and wrapped Law up in his arms, exactly like he needed.

“How long was I out?”

“Most of the day. Your blood back?”

“Pretty much, I think.” Law put a hand to his throat and felt only smooth skin—not even a trace of what should have been a fatal wound. But he could still remember the sensation of it opening under the witch’s barb, and her critical detachment as she watched him bleed out…

Kidd was lying along Law’s side with his head pillowed on his arm. “So, food?”

“Yeah. You eat that fish I got?”

“Nah, that thing was too ripe. I got a new one. I ate half already.”

“You? Got a fish? You can’t even swim,” Law snorted.

“Hey, there’s a thing called a net? Also a thing called stealing it from the fishing weirs. I’m not completely useless,” Eustass countered.

Law laughed, but was struck by another memory from earlier that day: Telling Doffy the same thing. Doffy laughing. Law hating himself, his little moment of power fading into another amusing feature on a favorite toy. That's how it went… Everything that Law was, defiance and damage and all, always got somehow twisted around to feed Doffy's sudden fixation on  _ having _ him. Even playing the game as hard as he could, delaying, diverting, bargaining, never outright refusing, Law still only barely managed to hold off the inevitable.

And he couldn’t help imagining it, all the fucking time. He already knew how it’d feel. Like the crushing pressure of Doffy’s grip around his wrist, combined with the searing pain of his knife in Law’s tongue. It used to make him proud that he could withstand the pain—confused but buoyed by Doffy’s praise. But there had a been a moment, about a year after Cora’s death, when Law had realized that these new tests of stoic passivity—staying still and silent while he was cut—weren’t training him for any form of combat.

Made the witch’s grim lesson seem nurturing in comparison.

Law gazed up at the ceiling and swallowed, good mood gone.

“Eustass, what do you want?” he asked again.

He wasn’t looking at the human’s face, but he could hear Eustass’ heart do a stumble-patter-thing. “I… dunno. There’s a lot of stuff going on. Right now I want you to eat this fish stew thing?”

“Mm… later. I, uh, need you to do something for me first.” Law had decided. He felt calmer.

“Yeah?”

“I need you to fuck me. Okay?”

He felt Eustass go completely rigid. “I already told you, it doesn’t feel—”

“I know exactly how it’ll feel, and I want  _ you _ to do it.”

“Why the fuck would you want that to happen to you at all?” Eustass countered.

“It’s gonna happen anyway, whether I want it or not.” Law rubbed at his face. His eyes were prickling.

“W-why is it gonna happen anyway??”

Law just shook his head.

“Fuck…” Eustass ran agitated fingers through his own hair.

“It’ll feel good for you, won’t it?” Law was actually getting a little impatient at his reluctance. Wasn’t like Law was asking him to walk over hot coals or anything.

“Yeah, sure, but like… it’ll mess me up to mess you up. You know? I haven’t had uh, great, uh—”

“You won’t be messing me up,” Law sighed and turned over so they were face to face. “If it’s you, it’ll all be okay, cuz I want you to. You be my first, and then no one else can take that away. Okay?”

“...Okay.”

Law was flooded with relief so suddenly he laughed. He pressed his lips hard to Eustass’. There was a hot little breath released in surprise, and then their mouths were locked together, all messy need, filling up on each other’s taste. Law’s newly-healed tongue throbbed, but he didn’t care.

“I wish I could give you a first, too,” Law murmured eventually.

“Actually,” Eustass was flushed and flustered. “I never been kissed before, so.”

“Really??” Law considered this as Eustass’ pale skin turned bright red all the way to his ears and he hid in Law’s neck. “Okay, good, we’re even. Wait, never?”

“Nhh-nh.” He was still hiding.

“Like, at all, at all?”

“Family don’t count.”

“Heh…” If family didn’t count, then this was Law’s first kiss too.

Kidd took his time preparing Trafalgar, with mouth and fingers and lamp oil. The selkie was fucking unreal like this… his tight fighter’s frame all loose and open, copper skin beaded with sweat despite the chill air.

He came easily enough, while Kidd was opening him up.

“Thought you said this’d hurt,” he laughed between pants, still shivering out the last of it into Kidd’s mouth.

“That’s only one finger,” Kidd warned him. He licked around the sensitive head of his dick and got the gasp he was looking for. Maybe Kidd could get another one out of him before he started hurting too much to feel anything else.

He saw the first flashes of pain cross Trafalgar’s face as he eased the second finger in. The selkie clenched and started breathing faster, but relaxed soon enough. The third finger made his spine go stiff and straight, though he still didn’t make any sound. Kidd stilled and let him get used to it.

Trafalgar let out the breath he’d been holding and tsked at himself. “Fuck.”

Kidd kissed lightly over his chest. His fingers twisted against the soft, oiled inner skin. Rough hands… probably felt like being fucked with a millstone. But the selkie was gradually, gradually opening.

“Trafalgar…” Kidd finally moved up to hover over him. His skin was drawn taut over tense angles, but he softened and yielded perfectly as Kidd pressed their bodies together.

“Mnn…” the selkie murmured, still trying to control his breathing.

“God, I wanna fuck you so bad.”

“Eustass—” A sharp shiver went through him.

Kidd guided his cock against the oiled hole. “Fuck…”

There were hands looping around his neck and Trafalgar was pressing up against him. “C’mon.”

“Tell me if it hurts.”

“Heh… as if.”

Kidd started pushing into him.

Trafalgar tensed up immediately and made a sound like a wounded animal. “Nghh!”

Kidd’s insides twisted up at the sound.  _ “Fuck.” _

“Ngh. M-more… c’mon…”

It was worse than Kidd had thought it’d be—like he was forcing him. Kidd still pushed in, deeper and tighter, but numb, like he was watching himself do this to the selkie. His insides were churning, but he was still fucking hard as a rock, and… yeah, it felt fucking amazing. Made Kidd just hate himself.

Trafalgar had lost his hardon, obviously, but he was still shooting demands at Kidd. “Fucking  _ do _ it, okay? Fucking—ah! Ngh! Ahh…”

“Hey, shh, don't, don't sound like that.”

“Don't you fuckin shush me… ngh…”

Trafalgar was holding onto Kidd’s neck and panting through his teeth, head thrown back and eyes glazed. To Kidd he looked like a branch bent back and about to break. The selkie made that wild, hurt sound again as Kidd pushed all the way in and settled against him. He had to still himself for a moment so he didn’t just come like that.

The selkie laughed shakily. “See?” he ran unsteady hands through the human’s hair. “D-doesn’t hurt.”

“Fuckin liar.” Kidd eased a hand around Trafalgar's limp cock, but it was pushed away. 

“Don’t worry about that. Just fuck me? Kay? Just…” Trafalgar pulled him into a claiming kiss again. But it was interrupted by clenched teeth as Kidd pulled back ever so slightly and then pushed back in.

It felt so perfect inside him, hot and slick, his whole body grabbing onto Kidd’s dick and trying to twist away at the same time. Kidd rolled against him slowly. The selkie jolted and clenched and held back little cries behind his teeth. But it all came out, loud and unrestrained, by the time Kidd was actually  _ fucking _ him. Not hard—just sliding into him as smooth and even as he could—but it still felt fucking brutal.

“Ah! Ahhh! Eu… stass…”

Kidd grit his teeth at the frantic edge in his voice. He must be in so much fucking pain.

“Eustass!”

“W-what.”

“My stomach…”

“Hurts too much?”

“I... don’t know… I don’t know… fuck… !” Trafalgar was suddenly tightening, clenching painfully around Kidd’s cock. “Okay stop, stopstopstop, ahhh… hurts, stop moving!”

Kidd stopped, alarmed. The selkie was coming in harsh jolts and spurts. 

“The fuck…?” he looked down at himself shakily, covered in sweat and come.

“H-holy shit,” Kidd pulled out suddenly, gripping the base of his cock.

Trafalgar gasped and hissed, “Ah! I said not to move.”

“Sorry, I’m fuckin gonna… ah…” Kidd came all in a rush over the mat. He stroked it all out if himself, panting.

“Shit…” Trafalgar let his head fall back against the blanket.

Kidd looked down at the pain-wracked body and felt heavy. He sank down next to Trafalgar with a sigh. He wanted to pull him closer, but the guy probably wouldn’t want Kidd to touch him after that.

“Kay… so,” the selkie said to the ceiling. He didn’t seem to know what else to say, though.

“So, congrats,” Kidd muttered, “you been fucked.”

Trafalgar snorted and went to kick him but cringed at the pain in his back. “Shit…”

“You don’t got a spell for that, huh.”

“Oh my god shut up. No, I don’t have an ass pain spell or I’d use it whenever you opened your mouth.” The selkie grit his teeth and sat up to grab a cloth Kidd had been using as a potholder. He cleaned himself off and lay back down next to Kidd—not inviting his touch, but not shying away either.

Kidd watched him blink at the ceiling of the cave, eyes skipping back and forth—thinking.

“You wanna tell me what happened today?” Kidd prompted.

“Um, no. Just.” He shook his head and stayed lost in thought for another long moment, before something else occurred to him. “Where’s my Skin?”

“Your side,” Kidd pointed.

“Ah… thanks.” He reached over and pulled it out, running his hands over its soft bristles. “Didn’t have time to hide it away this time, huh.”

“Heh, no point. You're here, aren't you?”

Trafalgar looked at him with a startled, open expression that Kidd didn't know how to decode. “Uh. Yeah. I…” he looked away. Fidgeted. Frowned. And abruptly curled up against Kidd, face buried in his chest.

“Um.” Kidd ran a testing hand over the dark hair. Trafalgar made an oddly angry noise, but stayed snuggled there, and Kidd settled for an awkward head-hug.

“I am _so_ fucked,” the selkie muttered, morose and muffled.

Kidd sighed. “You’re welcome.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feels will fuck ya


	19. Slaughter-lamb I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a lot of talking and setup, rehashing plot points in case you’ve lost track. I know I have.
> 
> Warnings: sibling scuffle, some violence

The thing was, Monet’s plan to use Eustass as a sacrifice was a really good one. Some random human Law had only just met, in exchange for his entire life? A human who had put his own damn self in the way by stealing Law's Skin in the first place? Perfect. It would have saved Law’s ungrateful ass had he not… gone and fuckin… got all…

Eustass idly brushed some stray hair away from the selkie’s forehead as they lay curled together in the cave, and Law tried very very hard to be irritated and not melty about it.

…Fuck.

He was so fucked.

“What you being all silent about down there,” Eustass complained.

“I’m plotting your death,” Law deadpanned into the human’s chest.

That put a grin on Eustass’ face. “Yeah I thought maybe you forgot about that. What you come up with now.”

“I’m going to feed you to a demonic tentacle monster so she’ll unfuck my Skin and give me powers.”

There was silence from the human for a minute.

“That seems like a whole big thing,” Eustass grumbled eventually.

“Yeah. Don’t have any other ideas right now, though.” Law sighed to himself and sat up stiffly. He looked around and found his clothes piled next to him, most of the blood washed out and the rest blending into the dark fabric. Dammit. Why did the human have to make killing him so hard?

Eustass lay back with his hands laced behind his head and watched Law dress.

“So, your Skin, huh,” he said eventually.

Law scoffed and ignored him.

The human persisted. “Look, maybe I can help you with that. Like, it’s clearly a big deal or whatever.”

“Oh you noticed.”

“And what. The sea witch fuck that up too? Or the… tentacle monster? Whatever?”

Law shrugged and kept right on with the silent shit.

Eustass rolled his eyes. “...Okay, asshole, if you’re gonna feed me to her, you could at least tell me what’s up.”

“Eustass I’m not actually gonna… fuckin… Look, just shut up. Leave me alone.”

The redhead made a tetchy noise and shuffled into his own pants. “Fine. See if I ever help you lose your virginity again.”

That little joke went over badly, and there was another several minutes of juvenile back-and-forth before the human convinced Law to sit the fuck down and eat some fucking fish stew. Law did, chewing angrily until his stomach was full and he felt better.

“It’s better when you kill it with your teeth,” he said finally. He looked over at the human, who rolled his eyes heavily. He was lying back against the cave wall on the far side of the fire.

“...Okay,” Law gave in.

“Okay?”

“So my Skin.”

Eustass sat up and waited.

Law crunched a fish bone in his teeth and sighed. “When you found me on the beach after the whole stealing-the-witch’s-knife disaster, I wasn’t just injured. She’d sent a curse after me too. It took my Skin off.”

“Took it off? Like forced you to change?”

“Yeah. Almost fucking drowned just like that. But it was more than that. ‘Your Skin will fall and refuse your hand,’ she said. So I’d never be able to put it on again, I guess.”

“...Shit.” Eustass leaned back against the wall with a low whistle.

“Yeah.”

“So you’re stuck human?”

“Seems like, yeah.” Law kicked at the empty bowl.

Eustass was thinking. “Curses can be broken, right?”

“Tch. By other, more powerful and probably more deranged spellcrafters, yeah. Or by stupidly good luck.”

The human came up with the worst idea ever. “Well… okay, tentacle lady isn’t the only witch around. There’s another witch, a human, or I think she’s human, and people go to her for—”

“Jus—fu—NO.”

Eustass’ already furrowed brow creased even more. “Well if she can fucking help you, might as well ask—”

“Did you see that shit?” Law jabbed a finger at his freshly healed throat.

“...Yes.”

“That’s what the last witch did to me when I went to negotiate with her. Just to see how I'd take it.”

Eustass scratched his chin. “Well you haven’t stolen anything from the other one so. Might as well go and see. Compare prices…” He got the bowl thrown at his head.

“It’ll be the same fucking thing, or more. They’re all like that, they just wanna get blood and tears out of you. I don’t wanna ever… that… I’m just not fucking dealing with another witch, okay? Drop it.”

“Fine. No witches.” Eustass rubbed his head and searched the ceiling for another answer.

Law returned to brooding at the expired embers of the fire.

The human took a breath and started to say something but stopped himself. It took a couple tries to get it out. “You could… stay… you know? Here?”

Law looked over at him. He was looking away, flushing again.

“Eustass-ya…” Law started, uncomfortably.

There was a thud and a scraping noise outside.  _ “Little brother,” _ something inhuman screeched.

They both leapt up, but Law gestured at the human to stay there and keep quiet. There was a brief, pantomimed argument, which Law won by making an aggressive flipping motion. He straightened, steeling himself against the pain still radiating through his spine and legs, and strode out to meet Monet with as much casual confidence as he could.

“Honored elder sister,” Law greeted her.

She was pacing around, crushing stones in her talons and seething. There were deep purple bruises on her back and shoulders. “We got busted. They don’t know about the human but Vergo’s not happy about the diversion. I gave him the slip but I don’t know where Doffy is.”

“Doffy came and found me.”

Monet stopped pacing and looked him over for marks. “And you weren't reprimanded? Daddy’s boy, GOD.”

“I  _ was _ reprimanded.”

She scoffed like she didn’t believe him. “Did you do your business with the sea bitch?”

“There were some issues,” Law grit out. His anger was returning. “She didn’t want the knife back.”

“I know,” she gave him an almost-guilty glance. “Did the other thing work out? The human offering?”

“No.”

She stopped pacing and gave him an impatient sneer. “What, do you not have the stomach for it after all?”

Law kinda lost it. “Why the fuck didn’t you warn me! I didn’t know what I was walking into!”

“You wouldn’t have had the balls to go if you’d known. I had to help you make the right decision.”

“It’s my decision! My fucking Skin!”

“No,” she swooped up close to him and hissed, “it’s the Family’s Skin. And you’re trading it away for a romp with this… this scruffy… gallows-bent… goon!”

“You fuckin jealous?” Law challenged. “I don’t see  _ you _ pulling any goon tail.”

“He’s some dirtbag byblow with a butcher’s block for a face!”

“...oh my god I’m RIGHT fucking here you guys,” Eustass complained from the cave. Law groaned.

Monet gave Law a furious look and pointed to the cave in disbelief. “What’s he doing still here?” she whispered furiously.

“I got my throat cut so he skipped work to watch me sleep it off,” Law replied mildly.

Eustass appeared from the cave with all his scruffy butcher-block charm and leaned against the cliff face outside. “Had to revive him with my dick.”

He and Monet glared at each other.

“Eustass: this is my sister. Monet: guy thing.” Law gestured vaguely between them by way of introduction.

“I’m gonna rearrange your insides, human,” Monet spat.

“Whole fuckin family of charmers,” Eustass grumbled.

“Well enjoy your cozy nesting time while you can, boys. If this squeamish baby selkie can’t get it together enough to do what needs to be done, I will fucking well do it for him,” Monet threatened.

“We’ll find another way,” Law insisted. “Something.”

“Yeah, like, going to the other—” the human started.

“We are not adding another witch to this clusterfuck Eustass.”

“There IS no other way.” Frost was spiraling out around Monet again, painting the rocks at her taloned feet with lace. She was fucking angry now. “I’ve gotten you the only out you’ll get, and I’ve fucking paid for it. You pass up this chance to restore your Skin and I'll tell the Family that you're abandoning us to be with a human. You know they’ll kill you for that. You especially.”

“Your fucking family would kill you?” Eustass asked in disbelief.

“She’s overstating things a bit,” Law handwaved it away.

“We are a warrior Family,” Monet stalked up to Eustass as he stood against the cliff wall, and breathed ice crystals that coated his hair and face. He bared his teeth but shivered. “Kin by virtue of strength and skill. Raised from the cradle into combat. Bound by no laws but the rule of the powerful over the weak. I killed the mother who birthed me just to show I was worthy.”

Eustass blinked and looked sideways at Law, who seemed embarrassed.

“Our Father makes us practice monologuing,” Law explained, massaging his temples.

Monet screeched like stone cracking and leapt into the air. She sunk razor talons into Eustass’ shoulders and started lifting him up, the beating of her wings sending up a whirlwind around them all. Eustass bellowed and beat at the talons.

“NONONO, SHIT!” Law lunged for her and managed to get a hold around her waist. She kept rising, though, carrying them both with her and screeching.

“Your family are DICKS!” Eustass raged at Law.

“I warned you about this EXACT THING!” he shouted back.

Law managed to climb into a position to get Monet in a headlock, but they were suddenly… all swung around upside down and falling? Eustass had gotten his feet anchored in a crack in the cliff, grabbed onto Monet’s ankles, and fucking pitched them all back toward the ground. And Monet couldn’t fly upside down, so down they went.

They landed in a flurry of feathers and dust. Only a short height shy of a splat.

Law was the first to recover, blocking Monet’s way to Eustass. She hissed at him and got up, ruffling her feathers and clacking her bloodied talons.

They eyed each other, breathing hard. Eustass rolled away and rose, clutching one shoulder.

Monet backed off and paced, glaring between them, calculating her chances of getting to the human a second time. Finally she turned to Law once more. “I’m not letting you do this to yourself, idiot. I’m gonna bring you home. Whole.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this—”

“Shut up. You. You fucking die tomorrow,” she sneered at Eustass. “I’ll see you at sundown.”

Eustass spat and spun around back toward the cave.

Monet pulled her Skin tight around her and stormed off toward the water.

“Monet…”

Law hesitated, then followed her down to the water's edge, trying to think of some way to explain why he was throwing her help back in her face. Why he fucking needed this… But there was nothing to be said, or nothing she would believe anyway, and then she was gone. The last summer sun was hovering just above the horizon, hazy and red. The frost Monet had planted in the stones wasn’t melting—it was spreading over the black ground as the day cooled.

If he'd been looking up at the sky, like Monet had told him he should do more often, Law would have seen the huge cormorant taking off from the cliff above and tailing the osprey at a safe distance.

But Law was lost somewhere in his own mind, as usual. He had one more night.

Law was just turning back toward the cave, vague plans of luring a different man from the human village turning idly in his mind… when something seemed to unbalance him. Like he’d missed his step, lost his breath, forgotten something… Something was wrong. He looked up toward the dark entrance of the cave.

“...Eustass?” He hurried up to the wide black mouth, breaking into a run. He got inside and blinked until his eyes adjusted to the shadowed interior. “Eustass!”

“Trafalgar,” Eustass replied guiltily. He was sitting on the far side of the fire, holding Law’s Skin in his lap. “Um, so…”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s okay. Can you just come sit here?”

“Put my Skin down.”

The human let out a heavy breath.  _ “Sit here.” _

Law slowly went and sat on the mat. They looked at each other. Law put on a soft voice like he was talking someone away from the edge of a cliff. “Okay so I can think of two possible things you might be planning to do right now, and both are insane.”

“It’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Eustass, if one more night is all there is then that’s what I want—”

“Trafalgar? Just…  _ sleep.” _

 


	20. Slaughter-lamb II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kidd and Monet each go looking for solutions in dark places.
> 
> Warnings: graphic violence, offscreen animal death

 

An osprey descended onto the crooked crag far offshore, just as the sun finished setting. Monet shrugged her Skin into its usual half-shifted arrangement and waited. She pretended not to notice as the water behind her swirled and opened, and sinuous tentacles clinked and scraped over the stone toward her.

“Does your daddy know you’re here, darling?” the sea witch purred.

“He’ll figure it out, but it doesn’t matter,” Monet turned to face her. The strange woman was more beast than last time Monet had met her—all snakelike arms from the neck down. She seemed to be able to hold her form in any number of mid-shift states, which Monet envied.

“So I take it your brother is having a little trouble with the terms of the exchange.”

“That doesn’t matter either,” Monet waved a hand. “I’ll do it for him. If you’ll accept it that way.”

“Ah, tragic. Poor boy. But… yes. All the better, in fact. The hint of betrayal adds nuance.”

“I'm NOT betraying him, I'm protecting him.”

“Of course. Sweet hatchling…” The witch smiled placatingly at Monet’s irritation. Then her gaze swept over the osprey, evaluating. “Hmm. Does it ever bother you?”

Monet tapped her talons on the stone warily. “...does what bother me.”

“Being so pitifully stunted.”

“Excuse me??”

The witch pursed her lips. “Though I suppose you can't miss what you never knew you had. The Donquixote keeps you all very well contained and controlled, doesn't he.”

Monet ruffled her feathers. “Well- _trained._ He makes us strong. And for that we are loyal.”

“Charming. But what if it was the case that his tight grip was not making you stronger, but keeping you weak and pliable—”

“Are we done here?” Monet cut her off.

The witch tutted. “I was only offering my observations. You'd do well to accept graciously that which is given freely.”

“You can keep your gossip. I came for business.”

“I see... Your brother has much nicer manners than you, hatchling.”

“Yeah, he’s a great kid, very popular,” Monet grumbled.

“Well if business is all, I’ll leave you to your hunt. I expect you by sundown tomorrow.”

Monet nodded and looked away, still stung. The witch smiled. She shrank and folded into herself until she was like a living bed of snakes, and slid fluidly into the water.

“‘Stunted?’” Monet complained, but not too loudly. “...old hag.”

 

* * *

 

 

So obviously Kidd was planning to do both of the things Law was worried he'd do: seek an audience with one witch, then the other. Kidd didn’t really know what kind of price they'd want, but he'd figure it all out as he went. It'd be fine. Trafalgar's Skin was rolled and tied in a neat package under his arm. A lamb was thrown over his shoulder, its neck broken. That, he'd stolen from Kizaru’s herd—that motherfucker could well afford it, and the blame would probably fall on his cat-killing son.

That thought brightened a very dark walk. Night was falling earlier than ever. There was no moon and he didn’t want to risk a light, so he worked his way over roads he knew, at first. And then went by guesswork and vague memory, oriented by the autumn constellation rising in the east—the divine blade. His destination was four hours’ walk inland, a peak split in half by a narrow gorge. As Kidd got higher into the badlands, the trees thinned. Here, the rocky landscape was dotted only with spindly poplar, lichen, and snakes. Kidd had made this trip a few times over the years, for reasons best forgotten, but he’d never followed the path all the way to its end. Rumor was enough to discourage him.

Also the animal heads. As he approached the foot of the peak, he was startled by the first one looming suddenly out of the dark. It was just a lamb head on a stick, most of the meat gone. The fucking smell should have warned him—like a feral dog’s hovel. The next few were more decayed, and the rest all picked clean down to bone. In the daytime, he knew, the trees were full of glaring crows.

He set the lamb on a boulder at the end of the row of heads. He slit open its throat enough to let the blood darken the summer wool, before turning the knife around to cut his own palm.

“Everyone cuts the palm to do the blood offering part. Stupid, though, right? You use your hands for stuff.”

Kidd put every ounce of willpower he had into not jumping out of his damn skin. He lowered the knife and turned to find the witch right at his elbow. Small and skinny, with long hair hanging loose. From what he could see in the dark, she was young, and… not wearing much. Lengths of linen bound her breasts flat to her chest and seemed to serve for a shirt. A long piece of tartan wrapped and pinned was a skirt.

Kidd cleared his throat nervously. “There somewhere else you’d like me to cut?”

“Nah, I don’t care where you take it from. Just sayin.”

Kidd looked himself over and considered other easily accessible body parts. The hand was just sort of… there?

She shrugged. “Look, don’t get all stuck on it. It’s just the seasoning, not super important. The lamb is great, thanks bunches, audience granted.”

“Yeah, whatever. So uh.”

She started circling him—poking, prodding, sniffing at him and making crude noises of amusement.

“Uh???” He stood absolutely still.

“Girl trouble,” she concluded after a short evaluation. “Come on, really?”

“No… really really not.”

“No? Bullshit.” The witch grabbed his hand and ran a very long, strangely cold tongue over his knuckles. Kidd shuddered and stayed frozen. “Oh… _man_ trouble. A little more interesting.”

“Not exactly it either.”

“No? Hm.”

“Can I just tell you?” Kidd really wanted to speed this process along.

“Shut up, I’ve only had one other caller since, like, midsummer. Let me take my time.”

“Kay. Yup.” She could do whatever the fuck she wanted, as long as it wasn’t eat him. Which it seemed like it might be… she was tasting his palm now. He could swear her lips were black, her tongue snakelike.

The witch smacked her lips consideringly. “There is a man, though. Or, boy, I guess. Your first love. Not your first lay.”

“Love is a… word,” Kidd conceded.

“It is, yeah. He’s a fisherman?”

“No.”

“No?… Hmm. Fishbone. Iron. Cloth. More iron…”

“I'm a blacksmith's apprentice,” he helped.

“Shut up, I knew that. This iron, though...” She licked sharp little teeth. “Deeper, and copper-tasting, which means blood, which means curses or conflict or both. I’m gonna say both. Guy, you got a lot of shit going on.”

That was true enough.

“And not just whatever’s up with your man… it’s a deeper taste, all kinds of fucked shit, written all over you… real nice… Hm. Now what is that?”

“What is what,” Kidd asked nervously, but she wasn’t paying attention.

“Hm hm hm. Heyyy, you want a drink?”

“No?”

She clambered off behind the boulder and dug around before popping back up with a corked flask. “Yeah you do, walked all that way. From the village on the coast, huh?”

“Uh…” Eustass took the flask. He could smell something like the stench of the animal heads coming out of it.

She put her hands on her hips, standing up on top of the rock. “Drink it, asshole. You’re my guest.”

Ugh. Well if he could down that Old World shit, he could do this. He gave her a sarcastic little toast and took a swig.

“JESUS URGKK” He retched and spat as it curdled on his tongue. “The fuck!”

“Heh. Not your thing, huh. My mistake.”

“It’s like drinking a fucking slaughterhouse!”

“Basically, haha…” She took the flask back and downed a long gulp herself. “Ah well. Not everyone’s born with a taste for it. Some were born sweet widdle baby lambs.”

“Whatever.” He scrubbed at his tongue. It was still fucking burning.

Finished her examination, the witch perched herself on the boulder and regarded him with penetrating interest. “Well I can't tell which fucked up thing you're here for. You got plenty to choose from, that's obvious enough.”

“You don't know shit about me, okay?”

“Hah. I know you got a big bad wolf or two that you should be getting dealt with. I don't mean the pups either.”

Kidd's heart seemed to stumble, then start again twice as fast. “FUCK off. I got that under control.”

“That a fact?”

Kidd inwardly seethed, really really wanting to fucking deck her smirking face… but he was here to get something important. “It is, yeah. Now can I tell you what I AM here for, or do I gotta wait around for more stupid guessing games?”

Her voice took on a low timbre—a man's voice. _“I'm offering you protection, idiot boy.”_

He blinked and found himself right up in her face, grabbing a fistful of her tied-on shirt, snarling in her face. “I said FUCK OFF.”

She didn't move, except to open her mouth.

Her long, black tongue snaked out and coiled around his wrist like a pulsing rope. It squeezed. He let go with a yelp but it held him, extending and curling up his arm. The crushing pressure forced him to his knees.

“Okay! Fuck!”

She laughed at that, and gave him a final little squeeze that made his bones crick before she released him.

“Cute boy,” she murmured like nothing had happened. “I don't get many as interesting as you. Or as truly fucked. What's your name?”

He stayed on the ground, massaging his wrist. “...Eustass.”

“You can call me Bonney,” she smiled like they were new friends. “I like you. Okay, I give up guessing. Who's this man of yours.”

Finally. “He’s a selkie. A shifter with a seal Skin.”

“For real?? No shit, huh.”

“His Skin got cursed off him by a witch.”

“Oooh yeah of course, that's the iron taste then. Nice. Not your everyday, run-of-the-mill thing. So.” She cracked her knuckles. “You want me to undo another’s work? That's gonna cost good. Do you know who crafted the curse?”

“Uh, yeah, some other shifter, lives in the sea, a lady with many arms.”

“Oh, her.” Bonney’s smile faltered. “Fuck.”

Kidd untied the bundled Skin and held it up.

She took a couple sniffs of it, then made a face. “Definitely her. Definitely a big one… She’s like that, always making a big production out of things. You know, I heard she killed and ate her entire clan to get her powers? Sick, huh.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, haha. This is gonna fuckin cost ya.”

This was the part Kidd was dreading. “What kind of cost.”

She shrugged. “How about your skin?”

“My fuckin what!?” Kidd stumbled back to his feet.

“That pink stuff you’re wearing?”

“I'm… human though?”

“So?”

“So um.”

“You got a knife; you’ll figure something out.” She considered his shocked look and spread her hands. “C’mon this is a deal! I'm not even asking for anything vital.”

“It kinda is…”

“Unless this turns out to be a really tricky curse. Lemme get another whiff… How was it phrased? What exactly did she say?”

“Fuck. Uh.” Kidd scrambled to tamp down on his panic and remember what Trafalgar had said. “Just like ‘your Skin will fall and refuse your hand’ or something.”

She snorted. “Wait, really? Hah. You sure? Those words?”

“Well I mean, just the middle bit, but yeah."

Bonney looked at him with her chin firmly shoved in her palm. “You’re a fucking dimwit.”

Kidd threw up his hands. “If I wanted to hear that, I could have gone literally anywhere else. I'm out.”

“Nono, hang on. Oh my god.” She spread a weary hand across her eyes. “This is too much. You’re too cute and too stupid. You could've broken the curse yourself, dumbass. It's so fucking easy, I don't even have to do any spell stuff.”

“Oh. Uh… So it's probably something lame like a kiss, huh.”

“No freebies, dumbass.” She massaged her temples.

“Okay but how much for you to just tell me if I'm close. That’s gotta cost less than all my skin, right?”

“Uuugggggghh you're making my teeth rot. Okay here’s the deal: you pay me one full length of your hair, I tell you the solution, you go straight fucking home and fix this simple fucking problem and I don't have to lose any sleep to second-hand embarrassment over how stupid you dumb babies are.”

“Just hair? That’s it?”

“Yeah,” she grinned. “Just hair. Just so I can track you down again later. I kinda wanna see how long you last.”

He hesitated, looking for the trap he was certain was behind this.

She pouted. “Aw don’t be like that. Okay look. I’ll give you some of my hair too. Little freebie. Then you can gimme a call if you’re like, in trouble and wanna talk real business. You just burn it and whisper my name into the ashes.”

“And you'll come and charge me an actual arm and a leg to help,” Kidd muttered and she chuckled. But he didn’t know what else to do. This deal seemed a hell of a lot better than getting eaten by the other witch. Of course, it also seemed like this one was sort of… putting him on the shelf to age for a bit before doing just that.

“Okay. Deal.”

“Nice!” She took a little tiny knife from her pouch and sawed off a bit of her hair. She folded it in a piece of cloth and tied the ends. “Here, don't fuckin lose it,” she offered him the packet.

“Sure.”

“I’m fuckin serious,” she pulled it away as he reached for it, “and don't tell anyone you have this.”

“Got it.” He took it and put it in his pouch. He went to chop a chunk off the end of his hair too, but the witch tutted.

“I said a length, and I meant the whole length.”

Kidd rolled his eyes and went to cut closer down to the root.

“Roots too, lamb chop.”

“What, you want me to stand here and pull out all of it by the roots?”

“Nah that'll take too long, and you gotta get back, right? Better just cut a piece of the scalp out.”

He glared at her. “You just gave me the end of yours.”

She waved an impatient hand like he was the one being difficult. “Yeah that was a gift. You are paying me, and the exact wording of the deal was a full length. You should pay attention to words more.”

Fuck. Well, one chunk of skin was better than… all his skin. Kidd pulled a pinch of hair up taut, and braced himself. A quick scoop down and across with the knife mostly did it.

“Fuck, fuck fuck fuck,” he swore, trying to hack away the clinging piece of scalp as blood started to soak his hair.

“Haha, you're a bleeder, huh.”

“Fucking fuck ow… yeah, it’s everyone’s favorite fucking thing about me.” He dropped the sticky mess into her greedy hands. She smirked and thumbed over it.

“Okay.” He clapped to get her attention back. “So you gonna tell me about this easy fix or what.”

She told him.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yeah, ‘oh.’ Dimwit.”

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd reached the blackwood and the village limits just as the sky was lighting up in the east. Trafalgar’s Skin was rolled back up and tied to his side, the hair packet in his pouch. He’d been trying to hurry, but he’d lost track of time, and had to stop a couple times to be sick from the aftertaste of that drink. The road was so fucking long…

He almost thought he was hallucinating the monstrous form waiting for him on the path through the black trees ahead, but then he remembered that no, this is just how his life went. He grimaced and went to meet the harpy.

“You are not good at hiding,” she sighed at him.

“Yeah I wasn't… uh…”

“Wasn’t…?” She fixed him with her piercing yellow eyes, talons gouging lines in the soft ground.

“Wasn’t…” He glared back. Comparing the two of them, doing the math, scanning for a weakness…

“…?”

“…”

Kidd fucking bolted.

He vaulted over a fallen log and disappeared into the trees. Monet swore and swooped after him. She couldn't pursue him at full speed in the close quarters of the wood, but Kidd could tell she was close behind him. He darted and zigzagged, trying to stay out of range of her talons.

“You can’t run forever, butcher block,” she called after him, grabbing and tearing the neck of his tunic.

“Fuckin leave me alone you crazy cunt!”

Kidd lost his footing, and the shifter was on him half a moment later. Kidd kicked at her and scrambled back and back, throwing whatever came to hand.

“Listen. Listen! I got another solution for the— fuck! Stop! I can fix the Skin! I just need to see him!”

She wasn’t in a listening mood, though, and she got a talon around his boot before he managed to kick her square in the chest.

“ACKK—Plghgh!” A precisely-aimed clod of dirt followed, hitting her full in the mouth. She scrubbed her face and spat while her prey broke loose and took off again. “I’m gonna tenderize you on some rocks before I serve you to the sea bitch, human!”

Kidd raced through the hazy underbrush, branches whipping his face and roots seeming to rise up to trip him. The wood was thinning, the way clearing… and his pursuer gaining on him again. He could hear the beating of her wings, feel the wind coming off them.

Finally, they reached a break in the brush—a clear, straight line to open fields. Kidd hesitated then bolted down it. There was a triumphant screech as the osprey woman rose up high and took a swooping dive after him. He threw himself down just as she reached him.

“I’ll take your ears for troph—PWAHHhkk—”

She was suddenly pitching backwards in a puff of feathers.

Kidd rolled away, gasping for breath. The branch trap had hit the shifter square in the belly and knocked the wind out of her. She was rolling around on the ground, making dry little wheezing sounds. She wouldn’t be delayed for long, though. He checked to make sure the Skin was still with him, and took off toward the cliff, clutching the stitch in his side.

He reached the cliff edge just as the sun was about to crest over the mountain. His throat was on fire and his sides cramping, but he didn't slow. He'd almost made it to the rope when something heavy slammed into his back and sent him skidding. He stopped himself just before the cliff. Over the edge, a solid bank of fog obscured the sea, beach, everything. It was like looking over the edge of the world.

“You think you ever had a chance? Please,” Monet hissed, landing on top of him. “This is the best thing you can do for him.”

Kidd struggled but he was pinned. “Are you fucking deaf? I said I got another way!”

“No you don't, and it wouldn’t matter if you did.”

She hooked her talons precisely into the meat of his shoulders, so that he couldn't move his arms this time. There was no way to stop them rising into the air. Kidd stopped struggling and just dangled as they swung out over the cliff and toward the horizon. It was actually beautiful up here… peaceful dawn light at their backs, black cliffs receding into thick morning mist, and then nothing but whiteness and the sound of waves surging. Kidd was suddenly struck by the memory of how much he'd wanted to do this, so long ago. To set off from the cliff and over the sea on borrowed wings.

The harpy and the human disappeared into the otherworldly mist, heading to their meeting with the sea bitch.

Behind them, a pair of sharp eyes watched their departure from a hidden ledge on the cliff face. Then the cormorant turned its attention to the beach and the sudden movement there, and swooped down silently to confront its prey.

 

* * *

 

Law’s thoughts on Monet’s clever little ploy. Art by the fabulous [MarieMichaels](https://mariemichaels1027.tumblr.com/) <3

 


	21. Demon blade I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kidd confronts the sea witch alone, while Law finds himself aided by a strange new ally.
> 
> First of three-part Final Showdown :o
> 
> Warnings: graphic violence

 

Law was dreaming. He found himself back on that dark beach, its mirrorlike waters reflecting strange stars. The spell-thread was right there this time, waiting for him, but he didn't care. He hurried past it and onwards up the beach, hoping to god that he caught Eustass before the idiot reached the witch.

He could sense that the meeting was at hand… somewhere just ahead, around the next corner, or the next he would find his human. Or whatever was left of him. Law picked up his pace. But he kept passing the same section of beach. The same thread, again and again. He was almost running now, stumbling along in the dark. But he wasn't going any faster, still not getting out of that loop. He was falling behind, losing Eustass step by step.

And gradually, Law became aware that he was being pursued in turn. He couldn't see it but he could hear it, smell it, could feel in the hairs standing up on the back of his neck that it was gaining on him. Rasping-clicking breath, scuttling movements and the scent of decay.

A cold touch on the back of Law’s ankle… he ran… Right into a solid, scaly something. He looked up: A dark shape cut out of the night sky, glittering eyes looking down at him.

“What are you?” he whispered.

It curled itself down to his height and tasted the air with a forked tongue.

“Kk-kko-ku,” it answered in its clicking tones.

“What do you want?”

“Drinnnhkk—”

 

* * *

 

 

Kidd jerked awake as Monet was dumping him onto a hard stone surface. He'd passed out sometime on the flight—the pain, vertigo and sheer exhaustion too much.

“Did you kill him? I needed to be able to do it myself,” a prim, smooth voice disapproved.

“No, he’s alive. And only as messed up as I suspect he ever is,” the harpy replied.

Kidd rolled onto his back and squinted at the two nightmarish forms. He blinked until they became less fuzzy, but they remained monstrous. Two fierce-looking women, one half talons and the other half tentacles.

“Fuck my hat...” He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on not hurling again.

“See? Alive,” Monet shrugged.

“But hardly whole. You've hit his head too much, clearly shaken something loose.”

“Nono, he was like that already.”

Kidd cracked open his eyes again to see the sea witch towering over him, studying him with mild disapproval. Her mouth was black and her eyes were ice.

“He’s… not what I expected. Are you certain this is him?”

Monet stiffened. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“Don't be rude, hatchling,” the witch’s prim detachment dropped momentarily into guttural menace, before she recovered her poise. “I was just noting my surprise.”

“Well he's the lucky guy. So how about you fix the Skin now.”

“Darling girl.” She turned her uncanny eyes on the fierce young shifter and Monet tried to hold her gaze. But even an osprey couldn't face that. “I insist on a certain degree of formality in these matters, not as an archaic affectation, but as a structuring lattice for the very, very volatile process of magical negotiation. Do you understand?”

“Y-yeah.”

The sea witch’s paralyzing eyes were turned from him… Kidd rose gingerly to his knees and looked around. A small rocky outcropping in the middle of still water, heavy mist, and nothing else. No land in sight, no way out.

A delicate finger under Kidd's chin turned his face toward her.

God, he hated that shit.

“Do you know why you're here, young human?” The sea witch smiled serenely.

Kidd cleared his dry throat with difficulty, and offered his most impudent shrug. “You wanted a kick in the cunt?”

Monet inhaled sharply, then stifled a nervous laugh into her hand.

The witch frowned. “You’re here to perform a solemn role in an ancient—”

“Or yeah, you wanted your dick sucked.” Kidd pushed away her hand. But it wasn’t a hand, it was something hard and undulating. A black tentacle… it seized his wrist. “FUCK.”

The world did a flippy thing ending in a skull-rattling impact. Kidd reeled, laid out flat on the rock. Monet let out a startled yelp and then giggled again.

“Perhaps you’d like to go and check on your brother,” the witch suggested tersely to the gleeful harpy.

“I’m okay here, thanks,” she declined. Then she startled at the dark look the witch cast her way. “Or um… if it’s okay to just watch this part?”

“Costs extra to watch,” Kidd muttered.

Another tentacle grabbed his ankle, whipped him into the air, and cracked him back down on the stone. He hissed and groaned. Seemed like a rib or something had gotten cracked this time… He started to regret that thing where he couldn’t just fucking NOT with the mouthing off.

“And anyway,” Monet was continuing, “I wanted to bring my brother's Skin back for him?”

“Patience. I will bring the Skin myself, after dealing with the matter of the sacrifice.”

“But…”

“OR.” Kidd sat up painfully again. “I could bring the Skin back and fix the curse thing myself, you could both fuck off, and no one has to get sacrificed.”

The witch seemed to find this funny. “He thinks he has a solution, does he?” she wondered to Monet.

“Yeah I—” Kidd tried.

“He doesn’t,” Monet assured the witch.

“I DO, I—”

“He has nerve, in either case.”

Monet huffed. “He has damage is what he has. He’s just trying to get out of this.” She finally turned to Kidd. “Okay, what's your big plan then, human? Just tell me and I'll go take care of it.”

Kidd huffed at her and counted the plan out on his fingers. “Okay so first, I fix the Skin without your help. Then you eat a cock and die cuz I'm not just giving you my one ticket outta here. Not without a guarantee that I live.”

“He seems confident enough,” the witch observed. “Where would he have gotten another solution, though?”

Monet ruffled her feathers—impatient or nervous or both. “He was babbling about finding another witch before. Probably bullshit.”

“Another…” the tentacled woman repeated to herself, and Monet scoffed.

“I don't know. Do you have witchy friends around here?”

“No,” she smiled slightly. “Not friends.”

“Well it doesn't matter. He’s bluffing.”

“Monet,” Kidd appealed to her, suddenly serious, “this is your only chance to make everything right, the way your brother wants. Take me back to him and I promise I'll fix the Skin.”

She rolled her eyes and ignored him. The witch’s smile was gone and she was tapping an impatient tentacle on the ground.

He shouted at the harpy in frustration, “You fucker! This’d be over already if you’d just let me see him!”

“You'll just get him killed, human,” she shot back. “Sooner or later. You don't know our situation.”

“Well I know a shit deal when I see one. Just remember, when it all goes bad and everyone gets dead, including your brother… remember it was YOUR fucking call.”

Monet bristled. “Maybe I could help you with the sacrifice part,” she suggested to the witch.

“No,” was the bored reply.

“Well I’m NOT leaving without the DAMNED Skin!” she burst out.

Without moving the rest of her body, the witch shot out two tentacles and wrapped them around Monet's winged arms. She hauled the girl over and slowly turned to look at her straight on.

Monet tried not to seem like she was panicking. She tested the grip of the tendrils and found them immovable.

She swallowed. “I… I promised him.”

“I know, pet. And I promised you both that I would deliver the Skin, restored to wholeness. I am bound very firmly by my own rules in magical matters.”

The witch suddenly let her snakelike appendages loosen and retreat. Monet didn't retreat, though—she just stood there, fearful and conflicted.

The witch pushed, “So I suggest you go and assist your brother. I have this feeling he might need it. As I read the signs in sky and sea this morning I thought I perceived something strange... A cormorant under the ascending sign of the blade. An ill omen. You should go.”

“A-a cormorant??”

“Yes,” the witch sighed, drumming her tentacle with an agitated clink-clink-clink. “A cormorant. To the east. Where the cliffs are.”

Monet turned white. She scrambled into her Skin and took off like a shot, heading east into the rising sun and the parting vapors of the morning mist. She disappeared and everything was quiet.

“Why’s a cormorant so bad?” Kidd asked, still sitting on the stone and hugging his cracked ribs.

The witch’s mouth made a thin line at his impertinence, but she didn’t bash him on the ground again. She considered him: The blood in his hair, the scars on his face, the Skin still tucked at his side.

_ “What,” _ he growled.

She didn't answer. She circled him, evaluating.

Kidd clutched the Skin and looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He was struck suddenly by Bonney’s mocking words, and saw himself for what he was: a helpless fucking animal, stolen away and offered up for slaughter on a stone. He tried not to think of the wet, tearing sounds that had followed him as he’d left Bonney to her meal just a few hours ago. All those rotting animal heads watching him go from atop their sticks.

“I didn't think it'd have to be  _ all _ of me,” he murmured to himself. His eyes were suddenly burning.

“Hah.” The witch stopped beside him.

He shuddered as a hard tendril scraped over the stitches on his head, turned his face back and forth, then traveled under his collar to trace the marks there. The healed shoulder wound especially.

“Interesting,” she conceded at last. “Quite intoxicating, actually.”

“Whatever.”

“Young human. Do you know what your selkie lover  _ is?” _

“He's…” Kidd tried not to imagine Trafalgar as he'd left him the night before, perfect but too still. Thinking of the look on his face before his eyes had glazed over, how he'd asked for just one more night and how Kidd had gone and fucked that up for them… that’d make this too painful. “H-he’s gonna be really powerful. More powerful than you.”

She smiled for real. “You know something? That’s entirely possible. He's already attracted the attention of certain otherworldly powers… to my great surprise. And we’ll see shortly whether he's equal to the burden of their interest.”

Kidd churned this through his brain with rising alarm. “You set a trap for him?”

“No,” she admitted, “actually, this one's all his own doing. I need only observe the results.”

“Well he's gonna beat it. Whatever bullshit test this is. And then he's gonna fuckin kill you.”

This time she laughed.

 

* * *

 

 

Law fell hard into wakefulness, fully alert and gasping.

Dawn, the cave, the blanket, the mat and… no Eustass. No Skin.

It took a moment for him to realize that there was a knife in his hand. A long, black knife—the one he'd stolen from the witch. He could see his own fearful reflection in its mirrored edge. Law clutched it and held his breath, waiting for something to happen that would explain this. Some subtle rustling or the ghost of a breath that would give away a lurking presence. Maybe Monet, bringing some other solution after all? Doffy with some new test? Or, or…

But there was nothing. No one. Law studied the knife, trying to focus on that instead of the emptiness of the cave and how fucking cold he was.

“Idiot,” he burst out suddenly, kicking away the blankets and scrambling to his knees. He raised the knife and jammed it down against the floor with a scream of frustration.

Instead of breaking, it sank easily into the stone. Law stared at it.

_ Drinnnkkh, _ some sinister voice urged in the back of his mind.

“What the fuck…”

“Selkie.”

Law's heart stopped. This voice, he knew. And the shadow that was falling over him, covering all of him. He turned toward the tall figure advancing into the cave.

“Traitor,” Vergo intoned. He had his short staff in hand.

“Vergo, this isn't… it's not… I didn't take the knife—” Law felt himself shrink away under the grim man and his blunt weapon, like he was falling into a pit and watching everything narrow to a single point far above him. Like so many times before.

“Liar, traitor, thief,” Vergo didn't slow his advance. “You never intended to return to us, did you, Law.”

“I did, I wanted to, I've been fucking trying!”

The cormorant swooped down on the kneeling selkie and hauled him half off the ground by the hair. “How did I not see it sooner. Pretty little bracelets, and what for? Hah.”

“Get off me—”

“Did you let him have you, selkie?”

“What??”

“The human.” Vergo shook him, like a fucking child, and Law shoved away with a frantic snarl. 

“None of your fucking business.”

“YOU are Family business. What do you think Doffy will say,” Vergo renewed his grip, “when I inform him that his promised one, his precious little prize, has betrayed his trust for the defiling embrace of a land crawler.”

“He…” there was the usual measured retort on Law’s tongue, but two things suddenly occurred to him.

One: Vergo knew about this whole fucked up fixation of Doffy's. Had probably known from the start.

And two: Vergo hadn't yet reported him to Doffy.

“Answer me, you little shit.”

Law had a moment of frozen indecision until the sharp crack of the staff on his shoulder brought him back to reality.

“AHH!”

“Selkie,  _ answer.” _

“Dunno, but he should ask the human for tips,” Law spat out.

A blow to the temple and his vision went white with blinding pain. He blinked, felt cold stone under his face and something trickling into his eye. Blood. He wiped it away in shock. Vergo had never hit him in the face before. It must have been Doffy's preference, he realized—to keep his face pretty.

“Fuck… nghh…”

_ Kh-hhh-hhehh… _ the clicking voice was laughing in Law's head, voice emanating soundlessly from the knife still stuck in the rock.

There was another sound too, hard to distinguish at first from the cackling voice: A subtle grating and squelching that seemed to come from right beside his ear. The pain in his skull eased… he put a hand to where the staff had struck him and found the skin completely and flawlessly healed.

_ Kk-ko-ku hhelp, Selkkie kill. Selkikkilll, Kk-ko-ku drinkkk. _

“This is so fucked…” Law reflected.

There was a shadow falling over him again and he knew without looking that the staff would be aimed at his skull this time. It still took every ounce of his willpower to fucking move instead of staying still and taking it, like he'd been so carefully taught.

A high whistling was enough warning. He twisted and the staff pulverized the stone by his ear. Another strike followed and Law launched himself forward this time, almost into its path—but then past Vergo and into a crouch opposite him.

Law rose with the demon knife in his hand.

“You’ve chosen to affirm your betrayal, then,” Vergo whirled the staff in his fingers with an expert flourish.

Law dropped into a defensive stance in reply. His heart was about to beat its way out of his rib cage but his hands were steady.

“So be it.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Maybe someday he will, darling human. The good odds are not on him this day, however.”

“You're fulla shit,” Kidd insisted. “He's stronger than anybody.”

The witch actually seemed delighted at this, and laughed again. “It's just so, so delicious how enamored you are of the boy. But… well, you must know also: Why it is he’s so taken with  _ you.” _

Kidd shrugged.

The witch knelt by him and kept her voice low, like she was speaking to a skittish pet. “Those born with our gifts are also born with a certain curse. An appetite for fleshly things.”

“You fuckin eat people, I know. You gonna get on with that or what?”

“It's not just the flesh, it's the potential of it—youth, skill, power—gone. Diverted. Once, when I was young, I tasted the right arm of a master swordsman. And as he shed tears for its loss, I realized that  _ that _ is the purest essence of what it is we crave.”

Kidd just watched his hands, still buried in the soft bristles of the seal Skin.

She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “Grief, darling. Pain. You’re a feast to a hungry young blood mage.”

It made sense. “He… He likes my scars…”

“Of course he does. Like a wasp to rotting fruit.” She stood and smiled. “Think of it this way: I'm saving you the sorrow of becoming your own lover’s prey.”

Kidd tightened his grip on the Skin. The grinding whine of flexing metal filled his ears. Long tendrils began to wrap around his arms.

“Exquisite as that would be. Are you ready?”

Kidd grit his teeth as the living iron closed on him.

 


	22. Demon blade II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Law faces Vergo, and Monet encounters interference.
> 
> Warnings: graphic violence, blood and injury, attempted rape

 

_ Stupid, stupid, stupid, _ the osprey berated herself as she shot over the waves toward the cliffs.

So stupid to leave Law alone, not knowing where Vergo was. So fucking stupid to linger there on that fucking rock while the witch played with her prey. And god, she was so, so fucking soft, allowing Law's little indulgence to go on this long. More than the knife, the witch, or the cursed Skin, it was the human that presented the greatest threat, because that was the one thing Doffy would not forgive. Not of Law anyway, his favorite, his special little…

Monet shook off that hot spike of familiar jealousy and put everything she had into speeding onward. She was so focused on that dim black line on the horizon that she didn't hear the massive wings beating above her until something heavy collided with her and she was plummeting toward the sea like a rock.

She hit the water hard and everything was confusion and static. She shifted and struggled to the surface.

“Daughter of mine,” the albatross greeted her when she surfaced in human form. “Wherever are you going?”

 

* * *

 

 

Law hit the ground again. He laughed dazedly at the delicate ribbon of blood that had fallen before him. By his own reckoning, he should be dead already, but his ruptured skin kept closing and his bones knitting together, far faster and cleaner than he'd ever been able to do on his own.

Vergo had halted his onslaught, the strangeness of it all finally hitting him. He hung back as Law got up once again, bloodied but unmarked.

“You've made a deal with some devil,” he accused.

“Pretty sure you made it for me,” Law noted wearily.

He still held the demon knife, but hadn’t even gotten close to cutting Vergo—the man who’d taught him how to fight in the first place. The cormorant had just parried Law’s darting attacks with precise jabs of the staff, followed by crippling blows to the selkie’s vulnerable points. Each time, the damage had faded away.

The click-clicking voice was muttering smug, gleeful commands in his head. It didn't seem to care that Law was getting his ass kicked, either. It just wanted more, wanted him to ‘ktear, kkill, drinkkh.’

Or it wanted to do those things itself… Unclear.

_ Skelkkieee, _ it insisted.

“Shut up,” Law muttered, and readied himself as Vergo lunged again. He thought he saw the staff go wide, so he darted in close… but he didn't see the feint behind it.

Vergo knocked the knife from his hand and sent him stumbling. A strike to his spine sent him down, airless. Then a flurry across his back and shoulders drove away all thought. They weren't precise killing blows anymore—just force heaped on force, the huge man throwing his whole weight into lash after lash. It was splitting his skin, gouging deeper and deeper, and Law wasn't fucking healing fast enough.

“Shit! Ahh! AAHHH!”

_ Kyehh-heh-heh selkkie. _

“Stay down this time, stay DOWN!”

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re being needlessly difficult,” the sea witch snapped. The human was trying to gnaw through one of her iron tentacles and it was throwing her off. “This is a noble end.”

“This is  _ bullshit!” _

Kidd twisted and kicked at the surging arms but couldn't budge them. He’d managed to draw his blade, but it just screeched and spit sparks when he struck the iron flesh.

“If you'd just stay still you'd preserve the dignity of the situation,” she insisted. 

More tentacles shot out to surround him. He knew there was nothing he could do to her with the knife, but it was all he had, except… Except the Skin, still gripped in his other hand. He looked at it, all dead and dry.

He put the knife to it.

 

* * *

 

 

The staff fell again and again. Law managed to get onto his back, and raise desperate hands against the barrage of blows… A bad move. He heard rather than felt the impacts that sent fractures arcing down the bones of his arms.

_ Stupid,  _ he thought even as he watched himself doing it. He was letting Vergo shake him, wasn't thinking… He clenched his teeth and tried to recall the sensation of coldness and denseness permeating him.

_ “B-be iron.” _

On the next impact it was the staff that splintered, all the way up to where Vergo held it. His assailant stopped in shock, but not for long. He descended on Law with his fists instead, knuckles every bit as hard as Law’s iron skin. They both fucking felt the blows, but neither body yielded. Law caught his fist on the next strike, stopping it cold. He held on as hard as he could but Vergo wrenched away—still much stronger than Law.

But at least the gashes on his back were finally closing, and Vergo couldn't do any real damage...

“Witch child!” Vergo snarled in frustration.

He started tearing at Law’s clothes.

Law was flooded with utter panic. “No! NO, Vergo! Vergo!”

_ Selkkhie? Selkhkkiekkill, ccraftkill. _

“Ki-ko-ku… ahhh! Kill!” Law tried to command the knife. Nothing. He kicked and struggled, grabbing at the hands that were grabbing at his wrists. There was no space to move or think—the larger body was suffocating him.

_ Selkhkkiekkill. _

“Die!” Law shouted at the crushing weight on top of him, vaguely aware of how ridiculous that was. Of course it didn’t work. “Stop! Fall! Cut!” he tried, throwing frantic commands at Vergo, his skin, his fists, anything, everything, “Just break!  _ Part.” _

The last word took. Law felt it leave his mouth and strike the other man dead on, cutting his muscle-bound neck open to the back of the throat.

There was no blood—just a smooth parting of the flesh, like a hot knife into candle wax.

“What… what did you…” Vergo faltered, putting a hand to the slice in shock, but he didn't fall. He was still breathing, still speaking, like his head wasn't half off his neck at all.

“Fucking  _ part!” _ The bloodless wedge opened deeper.  _ “Par— _ nnghh!”

Vergo’s fist impacted like a boulder against Law’s iron skin. And another, and another—ribs, stomach, face. Something unstoppable on something immovable. Vergo’s knuckles were splitting open and Law could feel himself bruising and bleeding… but he still wasn't breaking. And with that realization, he was suddenly calm again.

He stopped struggling and let it all glance off him with hardly a blink, like he'd been taught. He took a breath.

_ “Part,” _ he demanded firmly, and the wedge opened right through the spine with a slick snap.

“STOP!” Vergo roared, his head twisting and sagging on its thin strip of skin.

_ Kktear, _ the clicking little voice urged.

_ “Tear,” _ Law echoed.

This time the remaining flesh tore and bled instead of just closing over. Vergo’s hands flew to his head, trying to keep it in place, but it slipped away and thudded to the ground. It rolled over and came to rest next to Law.

There was a terrible pause as they looked at each other in shock, both fallen among the black rocks in the dark cave.

_ Hehh-kheh-heh kktear. _

Vergo gave up grasping for his head and renewed his attack on Law. But he couldn't see where he was hitting. Law grabbed him, twisted, and launched the larger man across the cave. He landed heavily and Law scrambled up.

Vergo’s headless body rose too.

 

* * *

 

 

“Doffy?” Monet wavered.

The warlord was floating along in albatross form like nothing had happened. It was so eerie, those hooded black eyes looking at her, unblinking, and Doffy's voice coming out of nowhere.

“Where are you going, my fierce one? Straining yourself so, and after such a punishment.”

“Doffy, L-law is, Law is…” Monet realized she was crying and swallowed the rest, blinking back those stupid, useless tears.

“Law is reflecting on his sins in isolation, dear one, and I thought we made it clear that you were not to intervene again. It's for his own benefit, you see, that he learn exactly how much he needs the Family.”

“But the witch! And he’s alone—”

“He’s not alone. Vergo is monitoring him. Or should be.”

Monet shook her head to clear it, but the tears were still falling. Maybe that would hide her guilt, though.

“You didn't see him? Vergo?” she probed.

Doffy paused. “Not since yesterday, no, but he… what is it?”

“The witch,” she stammered. “At the northern boundary rock, I went to meet the witch again and Vergo followed me and then she, she attacked him… a-and Vergo said to go summon the Family but I was w-worried for Law and I was gonna just get him first—”

There was a hissing intake of breath from the albatross. “Idiot girl,” Doffy shot at her. “You should have stayed and died instead!”

He spread massive wings and took off toward the northern boundary, where Monet had left the witch to her meal.

Monet treaded water for a moment, suddenly feeling like a rock was lodged in her chest and dragging her down. She’d never lied directly to Doffy’s face before… maybe that's why everything felt so wrong. The tears were coming harder now.

“It’s for the Family,” she whispered to herself. Anything for family.

 

* * *

 

 

Law snarled at the lumbering monstrosity. But he hesitated before repeating the word  _ tear _ again. Vergo lunged at him as he wavered, bringing them both down and wrapping crushing hands around Law’s windpipe.

_ Kk. Ttear. _

He ignored the clicking little voice.  _ “P-part!” _  Law shot at the body instead.

A clean wedge opened in its left arm. Vergo’s head roared again from the ground.

_ “Part!” _ Law insisted. Bone snapped and the hand fell, writhing. The other hand landed a hail of desperate blows on Law’s face, tore at his hair, tried to make the words stop.

_ Kktearrr, _ the voice almost whined at Law.

_ “Part! Part part part… part…” _

Vergo was falling apart, feet then legs hacked away bloodlessly, the stump arm gone to the shoulder, then then the other arm all at once.

Law threw the rest away from him and scrambled to his knees. Pieces of his former teacher twitched around him, like stranded fish gasping out their last on the shore.

“Shit!” he watched them, frozen with dread.

“Selkie! Filth, fucking filth…”

_ Drinkk! Kktear. Kkillselkkhiekilll. _

“Shit…”

He should do something, fix this, hide, finish Vergo properly, but everything was confusion and yammering noise. He was so fucking dizzy. Light spots were tracking streaks across his vision in the dimness of the cave. He must have used a lot of blood to do this…. Whatever this was.

“Weakling. Witchling.”

_ Drinkk-now. Kkhave-now! _

“Shut up! Everyone shut up, I'm trying to think!”

“You've destroyed everything we've ever given you.”

Law was trying not to feel like a cornered animal. He'd won. He'd beaten Vergo. He clenched his fists and hissed, "Vergo, you fucking knew what Doffy was doing, this whole time, and you didn't, you didn't even... Were you just gonna let it happen?"

_ Selkkiekk! Kkhave! _

"I serve the Family."

"I'm the Family!"

"You are fodder, and the Family is force. It has never been otherwise."

“No, it used to be different.” Law tried to think of something solid and certain. Of Cora. “Before he lost Cora, Doffy was still… we were all still real family, like we were supposed to be.”

“You think you knew ‘Cora?’ Rocinante betrayed us, left the Family and left you. He’s the reason it's you on the offering block.”

“You're a fucking liar, you've been lying to me my entire fucking life.”

“And you're why he's dead. Stupid child. Pawn. Perversion,” the deep voice snapped out in measured tones, like a chant. “Misborn brood parasite…”

Law shook his head and his vision staggered. Vergo's voice faded to a menacing background modulation, buzzing like a fly against his consciousness. He closed his eyes, waiting for the static and adrenaline to settle and his blood to return.

After an eternity, he realized that the demanding serpent voice was gone, and Vergo had fallen silent.

“Law,” a different voice called from somewhere behind him. A small, fearful voice. “Law?”

 

* * *

 

 

Monet hovered by the entrance of the cave and waited for her eyes to adjust to the shadowed interior. “Law…” she called in a loud whisper.

There was no answer. She could’ve sworn she’d heard Vergo’s rumbling voice as she’d descended. She stepped inside, keeping a hand on the wall to guide her.

There was uneven breathing in front of her. A hunched form sitting on the ground.

“Law?”

It was him, but he didn't turn.  There were confusing movements beyond him too—dying fish twisting on the floor? Many small  _ somethings _ writhing eerily. She was reminded suddenly of a worm she'd once sliced up, to see how long it'd take to die. She'd gotten bored and wandered off before it had stopped moving.

Monet put a feathered wingtip to Law's shoulder and recoiled when it met wetness.

“Shit. Hey. Law.”

“Blood is a-a blanket…” he mumbled.

Monet shifted to fully human and examined her fingers.

Red—on her hand, all over Law, drying in sticky pools under her bare feet. A thick trail of it led away deeper into the cave, where a pair of enraged eyes met her gaze. Vergo's severed head bared its teeth, amid the scattered pieces of itself still churning in anger.

“Harpy. Your brother has brought evil to the Family.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is the last for this arc! I love you guys, aw man, thanks everybody for reading. I have a lot of trouble finishing stuff sometimes so this is like mmmm yes I did an entire thing! And I actually have a bunch more already written up for this, it’s a series now okay, starting with some short little backstory things.
> 
> What should I do first? Kidd’s backstory is sad and brutal. Law’s is sad and Cora.


	23. The currents have their say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are what they are.
> 
> No warnings.
> 
> Final chapter!

 

An albatross glided high above the waves, heading toward a tiny, barren island far offshore. It furled massive wings as it descended, and a towering human stepped out from the feathered swirl onto stone.

The Donquixote waited and observed.

Blood streaked the ground… fresh. Smelled like… like…? The albatross didn't know what, exactly, but he could practically taste the iron and ozone in the air—the aura of curses and chaos that followed the most powerful spellcrafters.

He waited.

“Come out, witch!”

Nothing.

“You think you can interfere with the Donquixote Family? Cross longstanding lines when it suits you?”

Subtle rumblings—a deep chuckle seemingly emanating from the stone beneath his feet. But no one emerged to meet his challenge.

“Where is he, cursed one!” He struck the ground with his fist and cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact.

Nothing.

With an angry flourish, the albatross mounted again into the air. He began slow circles around the island in widening loops, searching and searching beneath the waves. But there was nothing, and it circled and circled without result as the sun mounted higher and higher.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a feathered touch at Law’s shoulder. It became a human hand and pulled him to his feet.

“Law, it’s okay.”

Law looked at Monet in confusion. She was featherless… so strange. She looked so small that way.

Monet glanced around them, taking in the scattered pieces of Vergo’s body. His head was still lying among the stones, glaring and uttering dire condemnations.

“You’ll both be ground under the heel of the Family,” it growled. “Traitors.”

“He was going to kill me and. But… I couldn’t fucking kill him,” Law felt the need to explain himself but couldn't get the words out. “Can’t.”

“It’s okay. I’ll… um,” Monet faltered.

Vergo mocked her, “You’ll what, harpy. You’ll do what your pathetic brother couldn’t? You’re as weak as he is.”

“I’ll do whatever needs to be done, Vergo,  _ sir,” _ she shot back.

“You’re a disgrace to the Family,”

“You don’t know what family is,” she turned away from him. “Law, where are you hurt?”

“Not hurt.”

“You're fucking bleeding out, you liar.”

“Oh,” Law looked at himself. “Nono, it's all healed. The knife uncut it.”

“What knife? What??”

“The demon knife, from the witch, that I stole. It tasted my blood when Vergo cut me and then it found me and followed me out of my dream and…” he stopped as he realized how crazy he must sound. He looked around for the knife but it was gone. He shook his head and tried to wrench himself back to reality. “...fuck.”

Monet seemed to give up on that line of questioning. “Okay look, just… get your shit together. The witch is coming.”

“The fucking witch is coming?!”

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Law. She’s bringing your Skin.”

“And she has my Skin…” Law almost asked if that meant…

But he knew the answer. If the witch was bringing his Skin, then Monet must have successfully delivered the required sacrifice to her. And there was nothing he could have done after all. He’d spent all the coin he had—the very life of one of his own mentors, and the life of his… his human. And for what? To come back around to exactly where he’d started. Barely surviving. Nothing had changed.

For a brief moment, it had been the two of them, and that by itself had seemed like a way out. Or at least a way through.

All just bullshit.

“There’ll be no suppressing this secret. You’re both as good as dead,” the cormorant needled them.

Monet came to a decision. She gestured at the scowling head. “I’ll take this one and finish it. You stay here and wait for the witch. Don’t move. Okay? She’ll bring your Skin and you’ll be back to normal and we'll go home together. Doffy will never know. Everything will be back to how it was.”

“Yeah…” he agreed blankly.

“Law?”

“Monet. It's okay. Go.”

Monet still didn't move, though. She hovered, fidgeting, and avoided his eyes when he looked at her. “The human, um. You know it never lasts with them. Not for us. This is the best way this could have—”

He snapped at her, “Can we save the lecture?”

“Tch,” she hissed, letting her form flow back into its semi-shifted state. “Not even a thank you?”

“Later,” he muttered between his teeth.

“Law can you just admit—” she insisted.

“Monet—”

“Nono, I don't want you blaming me for this when I'm the one who… when _ I… _  Listen: The human was only ever going to be a problem. Almost got you killed, and for what? Fucked up fishbait face, anyway.”

Law sighed. “Fucked up everything. But it was… he was…”

“Oh my god you guys I'm  _ right _ here. Assholes.”

Monet looked about ready to have an aneurysm and Law wasn't far behind. They turned.

Eustass was there. Fucking standing there at the cave mouth all casual, and only a little bloodied. He had Law's Skin.

“GodDAMMIT, WHAT. What! Just WHAT?” Monet sputtered.

Law wanted to ask the same thing but couldn't get the words together. “You…?”

“Yeah, me.” Eustass gave him a tired smile.

“Y-yeah,” Law bit his lip.

“NO.” Monet interjected. “Nonono, you had to go get yourself eaten so Law could fucking come home! Did you fuck that up for him, human?!”

“I already said I got another way. I—holy fuck what is that??” Eustass stopped short when he met a severed hand, clenching angrily of its own accord.

“Human,” Vergo’s voice rumbled through the cave. “You'll wish you'd perished at the witch’s hands; the Family will visit such wrath upon you as—”

Monet shouted over him, “You mean MONET will visit some wrath upon him, and then you, and then this twitterpated titmouse selkie—”

Law couldn’t even hear either of them. He kicked the hand aside and grabbed Eustass’ shirt.

“Trafalgar, I—OW!”

Law punched him hard in the shoulder, bursting out, “I fucking wanted you to fucking stay—”

“I know, I’m so fucking sorry—” Eustass extended calming hands.

Law shoved the hands away. “Just fucking listen to what I'm fucking telling you!”

“I fucking know you fucking told me and I’m—”

“You don't fucking know, you're a fucking idiot!” Law yelled in his face.

“Don't fucking call me that!” the human snapped back.

“Don’t tell me what to…Ugh! Fuck! Just shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“You.”

They were standing so close, not quite touching or looking at each other yet. The human reached out a tentative hand to the black hair.

“Fuck…”

Law leaned into the touch but stayed standing stiffly, clutching his own ribs like he was holding himself together. He could sense the pain radiating from different parts of the human. Nothing life-threatening, but it was still almost unbearable to feel, and Law just didn’t have the strength left to fix it all. He focused instead on the warmth radiating from Eustass—all metallic and animal at once. The realness and closeness of him struck Law suddenly and made his throat close.

“I was trying to fucking say I wanted you to fucking s-stay  _ alive _ for me,” Law told him.

Eustass swallowed.

Law pressed, “Okay?”

“...”

_ “Eustass-ya.” _

“...kay.”

Law almost laughed. God, now his throat really was all fucked up. He pulled the human in close and rested their foreheads together.

Eustass exhaled painfully. “Y-you too. Okay?”

“Mhm,” Law managed.

It was another long moment before Law collected himself. He pulled back as he sensed Monet next to them. She’d picked up his Skin from where it had fallen to the floor, and was examining it. Still dead. She looked at the human with hard eyes.

“Were you being truthful, human?” she questioned with the promise of violence in her voice. “You found another way to fix it?”

“I did,” Eustass said.

They glared at each other.

Monet held it out to him. “We’ll see.”

He grunted and went to take it.

She pulled it back, leaning close to his face. “If you really want him to live you'll leave him alone,” she snarled. But she gave up the Skin and turned away.

“Monet,” Law tried to catch her and pull her into an embrace.

“I'll see you at the Keep,” she pushed his hand away without looking at him. “I met Doffy on the way here and diverted him, but he'll be back this way soon. Be quick.”

The harpy gathered up each piece of their one-time mentor and rolled them into the blood-soaked mat. The cormorant’s Skin went on top. She grasped the bundle in her talons and flew out of the cave and up over the cliffs, leaving selkie and human to their goodbyes.

 

* * *

 

 

There may have been human witnesses to see the harpy winging her grim way overhead with her strange burden, but Monet had no time to worry about land-crawlers. Doffy would return soon, and she had a Family member to murder.

Her powerful wings beat a frantic rhythm through the morning sun, up and up, over the black cliffs, over the frosted fields and the human village, and up the mountain beyond. She didn’t know where she was going or what she was looking for until she reached the stone cairn at the top of the mountain. She set down in front of it and unfurled the mat. A gruesome rain of body parts fell onto the rocky soil.

“And how will you hide your guilt from your Family, harpy? The ones who pulled you from hell and embraced you as their own,” Vergo’s head taunted her.

“Hah.” Monet fluttered up to the cairn and began moving aside the topmost rocks.

“How will you stand among your brothers and sisters.”

“I’m doing this to protect them.”

“You aren’t so noble.”

Monet scoffed at this, and kept working while Vergo went on.

“I know you better than any left alive. I see you for what you are, unfavored child… First born but last chosen, thirsting after any crumb of regard that falls to you. You slit your mother’s throat for the mercy of a single kind word, and now you turn on your saviors for less than that. And from a brother who has already spurned your sacrifices…”

The harpy began gathering up pieces of Vergo and dropping them into the gap she’d made in the cairn. A hand and then a stone, a foot and then a stone. She kept her mouth sealed but couldn't shut her ears.

“You are the rot that spreads unseen, in the dark of your brother’s shadow, in the chill of your Father’s indifference. You crave light that will never fall into your depths.”

Finally, Vergo’s cormorant Skin went into the pit. Monet gripped the head, poised over a sharp stone, but found herself frozen. The uncanny bundle was watching her… It was just so  _ wrong. _ The movements of its mouth and eyes sent shivers of disgust over her skin. It didn’t seem like a piece of Vergo anymore, or even a piece of a person. More like a stone she'd once turned over to find a shock of surreal motion: maggots churning in something that wasn’t a stone after all.

It interrogated her. “Who was it who came that day, to free you from your birth family? Doffy? Law?”

Monet studied it, lost in thought, “You and Cora.”

“And when we’re both gone… who will remember or even care how you’ve suffered? Who will remember what lightless pits you’ve pulled yourself from? Only I know your true strength…”

At this, the harpy shook herself and sneered. “Touching. But kind words and back pats soured on me a long time ago. I'm into freer fare these days.”

She put the head into the cairn with the rest. Stone after stone went on top of the cormorant, and gradually he was buried in darkness. But his voice still echoed from inside.

“Monet! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“Yeah? I’m making sure someone comes out of this worse off than me.”

“Traitor!”

“I mean, I was counting on the human taking the hit, but it might as well be you.”

“Monet!!”

“And this is nice; feels personal. My gratitude for your sacrifice, Vergo—my oldest friend.”

“MONET!”

 

* * *

 

 

An osprey preened itself with idle dignity atop the mountain cairn overlooking village, cliffs, and sea. It listened to the desperate voice ringing out from below it, waiting for the satisfying moment when rage weakened into quiet defeat. But the rumbling kept going, and the osprey eventually became bored.

It took off into the clear, cold air in search of other prey.

 

* * *

 

 

The selkie wasn’t one to probe, and the human wasn’t one to dwell, so the exact story of how Kidd had escaped that distant stone remained unspoken.  When Kidd looked back, he mostly remembered the sea witch’s taunting, saying that Trafalgar only wanted him for the broken parts. Which he knew wasn't true. But that little suggestion lodged itself somewhere deep down:

_ “Grief, darling. Pain.” _

He could still hear it in his head.

The particulars of how he'd escaped were hazy in comparison.  But it had started with his knife, held threateningly to the selkie's Skin, and the sea witch freezing in her assault.

_ “Put the knife down, human.” _

_ “So this'd fuck things up for you, huh?” _

_ “It would inconvenience me. It would change nothing for you.” _

And then it had become something familiar—a game of poker, or maybe chicken. Kidd had  guessed her hand quickly:

_ “You told Monet you'd deliver the Skin whole, though. I heard you.” _

_ “This is pointless. Your little bit of defiance will change nothing except that the restoration will cost me more than I'd expected. I will still be able to deliver the Skin, as I promised the boy.” _

_ “You'd be taking an overall loss though, huh.” _

_ “I've accepted less for more before.” _

_ “Well hey, I have this idea, and it costs nothing to listen, right?” _

To his astonishment, she hadn't bashed him on the rocks again. She'd let him go and waited. He’d laid out his first card—Bonney’s suggested solution.  The sea witch had frowned in surprise, looking at him like he'd just pulled a rabbit out of his ass.

_ “…Yes. That would indeed restore the Skin without my intervention. A solution so simple it hadn't occurred to me. I suppose it required a simple mind.” _

_ “Great! So let's call off eating me?” _

_ “No. The exchange was not simply one thing for another. The selkie stole from me; violated my sanctum. The insult must be repaid.” _

_ “Well, how much without the Skin fixing then?” _

And then came the negotiations.

_ “I suppose I could accept half of you.” _

_ “That would still… make me die.” _

_ “Would it? Well I doubt you have anything of value to bargain with aside from your own hide.” _

Which would usually be the case, yeah, but not this time. Kidd had had one more card to play.

Cold, strange eyes had analysed him as he'd placed a little cloth packet in the witch’s hand. She'd peeled back one corner and a tangle of long hair had peeked out.

_ “How did you get this, human.” _

Kidd had shrugged.

_ “Get what?” _

An agreement was reached.

And then Kidd was being carried along in darkness, on a raging current through an undersea tunnel that gradually lightened as he reached the surface. It all felt terrifyingly familiar, like he'd somehow slipped back into his dream. Behind him, sea grass was waving and reaching for him, but he didn't once look back. Death could wait.

 

* * *

 

 

“You're injured,” Law observed after the harpy had left them alone in the cave. He ran a probing hand over the human, looking for the worst of the damage.

“Not super injured. Not like you, you’re all…”

“No, I'm already all healed, this is left over.” Law tried to listen past all the surface stuff—the web of tiny crushed threads oozing spent blood under the human's purpling skin. Past the bruises, he got a brief impression of cold stone and jarring impacts. He frowned, “How the fuck did an entire island hit you three times in the head?”

“Tentacle monster.” Eustass explained simply.

“Right. And the punctures… I guess were uh…”

“Feather monster.”

“Yeah. Sorry about her.” Law focused on the broken ribs, feeding the slightest amount of himself into the cracks. Eustass’ flesh accepted his easily, and the torn tissues sealed and cooled.

“It's okay, she came around. And I got to hit her with a tree, so I'm happy.”

Law snorted, then laughed despite himself. He covered his face with his hands. “You hit my sister with a tree??”

“Yeah.”

“Heh. How did you get away from the sea witch?”

Eustass shrugged helplessly. “I don't even really know… I mean, I somehow convinced her to call off the 'eating me' deal. So she didn't fix the Skin, but I got to live. And then I gave her a little gift to forget the whole thing.”

“A gift?”

“Yeah, uh… never mind, just something I picked up along the way. She seemed pretty happy with it, actually.”

Law just shook his head and pushed messy hair off his forehead. It was all stiff with dried blood. “Fuck…” he finally looked himself over—it was pretty bad. His head was finally clearing, though.

“Hey, c'mon,” the human took his hand and pulled him toward the cave door.

“Huh?” Law followed.

“Let's clean off.”

“Oh. Kay.”

Law let himself be pulled along, down to the water. He glanced at the Skin held in Eustass’ other hand… still dead. And no way did the human actually have a solution. But he was alive, so…

They'd figure something out. Doffy would know what to do. And actually… the warlord had probably just been waiting for Law to come crawling to him for help, all along. He'd grin and say how pleased he was that Law relied on him so much.  _ See? We are nothing without Family, little one. _ This whole thing was a fucking test after all…

Law grit his teeth and tried to put the coming exchange from his mind.

Eustass brought them down to the beach and right into the water. Perfect, soothing sea water, gentle waves. Law sighed and ducked under. He surfaced a long moment later with the blood all scrubbed from him, copper fading away into the endless salt water.

Something was placed over his shoulders.

“Eustass-ya…” Law felt firm hands wrapping his Skin around him. “You know it’s broken.”

Eustass smoothed the spotted fur down over Law’s back with hands that shook a little. “Um. Should be good now, though.”

“What?” Law looked at him.

Eustass shrugged.

Law blinked and paused. He looked down at the Skin…

He could feel it again—it was a living, breathing part of him. Its fine fur stood on end at the shiver that went up his spine. He slipped an arm into it and it folded away like it always did.

“Eustass-ya!!!”

“It worked?”

“Yes!. It… it worked! Wait,  _ what _ worked? What did you do.” Law looked at him with sudden dread.

“It’s uh. Probably better if I don’t tell you.”

“Did you make a deal with the fucking witch?”

“Yeah. But—”

“Which fucking witch?”

“Uh, both.”

“Holy fuck!”

Eustass put up his hands and laughed. “Yeah, but I didn’t even have to pay anything huge to either one, just some little gifts. It’s just that the solution was so fucking simple you’ll probably drown yourself when I tell you what it was.”

Law glared, “I’ll drown YOU if you don’t tell me.”

“Okay, so.  _ Your _ hand.”

Law wasn’t getting it. “Drowning is very painful, Eustass.”

“Not  _ my _ hand.”

Law jumped him, bringing them both down into the surging water. But he was too happy to actually drown the idiot. He grabbed and kissed him instead, as waves broke over them and smacked the flailing human in the face.

Eustass spat out sea water. “This drowning stuff ain’t so bad.”

“Tell me,” Law ordered.

The human leaned back on his arms and heaved a sigh at the selkie straddling him. “The Skin would ‘refuse your hand’ if you tried to put it back on. The curse was badly worded—she just said YOUR hand. Anyone else’s hand would put it back on you just fine. Curse broken.”

“What!”

“Yeah.”

“What!!!”

“Yeah...” Eustass looked at him with that blank, tired stare again. He looked his scant fifteen years for a moment. He seemed about to say something else… he took a breath and opened his mouth, but then looked away and closed it again.

“...You want something in return,” Law guessed. He’d known this was coming all along. The human wanted to be told that he'd overcome the trial, won the game with romantic zeal and noble intentions and whatever, that he could keep his shifter now.

“I… yeah.”

“You already gave me my Skin back. You have no way to hold me to it now.”

Eustass shook his head, “I’m not trying to hold you to anything, I’m just asking you.”

“So ask,” Law urged.

The human still hesitated, though. His face screwed up. “God, I want you. So much, everything about you. I want you more than almost anything.”

The selkie swallowed. “Look, you can't ask me to stay here, among humans, I—”

“Nono, I'm not.”

“You’re not?”

“No, um..."

“Okay?” 

"Yeah. Um. Okay, just..." Eustass leaned in and pressed their foreheads together again, as though steeling himself.

"Just...?" Law tangled soothing fingers in the soft hair at the back of his neck. 

“Just…  _ please. _ Get me out. Take me with you. I'll do  _ anything.” _

“Um! Eustass-ya...” Law pulled back to look at him in surprise and Eustass seemed to panic.

“Or! Or doesn't have to be with you if you don't want, but somewhere, anywhere. Just away. You never even have to see me again—”

“Why??”

“Trafalgar, this fucking place is gonna kill me.”

“I…”

He crumpled. “Please!”

Law clutched his knees. Now that he'd pulled away he didn't know if or how he should reach for Eustass again. This was the moment he should do something, offer something, help somehow. But he didn’t have anything that would fix this, really fix it.

He couldn’t look at the human. “I… I can’t. My Family would kill you on sight and then me and, and I have nowhere else to take you. Beyond the Family's reach, it only gets worse, enemy territory and then nothing. There’s just no place for a human out there.”

Eustass… laughed.

“Yeah. I know.” He straightened and pushed tangled hair out of blood-colored eyes. The vulnerable window closed and a bitter twist settled onto the human’s face. “But there’s no place for me here either.”

 

* * *

 

 

The selkie took his leave as the sun peaked. He hesitated in the water with his restored Skin flowing around his shoulders and newfound power flowing in his veins. The human he'd named Eustass was perched casually on the boulder where he'd found him, a few more scars but otherwise unchanged.

“My name is Law,” the selkie offered by way of a parting gift.

“Kidd,” was the soft reply.

 

* * *

 

 

 

[End of arc 1]

 


	24. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, one more for good feelings

 

Selkie and human met at the dark of each new moon. Easier to get around unseen by day-flying shifters.

Monet, to Law’s surprise, kept watch for them every time.

“You’re going to go anyway,” she’d shrugged the first time she’d caught Law sneaking out. “And I'll be blamed as usual.”

That was all. She'd turned and walked away, going to wait and keep watch atop the Keep’s crumbling towers. Her shoulders and back were heavily scarred—she hadn't let Law heal her after their punishment for the sea witch debacle and Vergo's disappearance. She barely talked directly to him anymore, but she still did little things, like keeping watch while he met Eustass, or diverting Baby’s chattering clinginess when he’d returned from another draining mission and needed space. Which was weird… Monet normally couldn’t stand Baby. And each time he’d tried to thank her she’d shrugged him off and gone off to hide in the cloisters. She was cold and distant these days.

Doffy too. He'd been angry that Law hadn't needed his help to return after all (had even _gained_ in power in his absence), and seemed to be trying to punish him by withholding his usual favors. The warlord was also sending Law on more and more dangerous assignments, sometimes with Monet or as part of a party, but often alone. Especially assignments that only Vergo could normally handle. And Doffy became more and more hostile when Law returned unscathed from each one.

Normally Doffy's disapproval would make Law beyond anxious. And it did hurt…

But Law found himself less and less affected by it as months went by and his own successes added up. His father's singular hold on him was slipping. He didn’t seem as titanic, as infallible as he had before. He even started to seem… petty? Maybe it was the way Doffy’s hold over the Family had been weakened by losing Vergo, his stolid right hand. Maybe it was Law’s own developing abilities. Or maybe he just wasn't a child anymore.

In any case, the warlord was cold and suspicious toward Law, waiting at a distance and evaluating this new potential threat to his authority, among all the others that were arising.

It was a new kind of precarious game, but Law had advantages he hadn’t before.

And Law had the rest of his family: his sisters, and yeah, even his stupid little brothers. He’d hardly ever slept away from the suffocating bunch of them before, all piled together warm and secure in their tower room. Monet, Baby, Sugar, Buffalo, Dellinger, Bellamy, and Law. They were a chaotic brood of power-hungry misfits, but they were his. Especially since Cora’s death two years before, the older ones had always cared for the younger ones. And now, with Vergo gone and Doffy distracted by the resulting power struggles among his lieutenants, Law and Monet had taken over training them all as well. The upper echelons of the Family were in turmoil, but the shifter siblings were more than ever a tight little pack, hunting and sleeping and fighting as a unit.

Law had more power, and more footing, than he’d ever had in his life.

And Law had the human.

 

* * *

 

 

He waited for a perfectly dark night.

The selkie poked a sleek, furred head out of the black water some distance from the shore and waited. Clear.

Law skimmed along just under the waves and emerged in human form at the shoreline. The lapping of the waves would cover his approach. He slipped like a shadow between boulders like black monoliths until he could see the outline of a cave mouth some distance above. There was a dim light inside—a lamp, obscured by a thick blanket across the entrance. He stalked silently toward it.

Something launched into him from behind and slammed him to the ground.

“Hiiii,” it enthused.

“I let you do that,” Law huffed, smushed.

“Like hell you did.”

Law flipped Eustass and went to put him in a hold, but he was getting trickier to grapple each time. A natural fighter (and also a dirty, cheating fighter), the human picked up every move Law used on him and added weird twists.

The selkie finally got a hold around the human's neck and shoulder, and squeezed down over the artery… until the human bit him.

“Ah! Fuck sake! Cheapass,” Law complained, letting go and shaking his hand out.

“Haha... Do I win?” Eustass lolled on the ground with his hands pillowed behind his head, like he hadn't been getting blacked out like two seconds before.

“No you fucking do not! Biting like that…”

“Aw. You like it, heh.”

“Rude.”

The human grabbed his arm. “I got healing powers too, wanna see?”

“You got rabies,” Law grumbled. But he couldn't help smiling a little as Eustass brought the bitten hand to his lips, and “—aaOW! You bit me again??”

“Yah. Better now?”

“No!”

“Hm,” Eustass pulled him down to the ground too and rolled them so Law was under him.

Law could feel their hearts beating in ragged counterpoint… he swallowed as a wave of need hit him. The late autumn air was cold as hell, but the human’s breath against his lips was hot, and the kiss was deep and perfect.

“How bout now?” the human murmured.

“Y-yeah. Better now.”

Eustass gave him another one for good measure.

They slowly made their way to the cave, muffling laughter with more kisses and trying to trip each other the whole way.

“I have this cool thing to show you,” Law started, once they were inside the cave and he’d pulled Eustass’ face off his for all of two seconds.

“I already seen your dick but okay,” Eustass replied, pulling at Law's belt.

“Hah! Not that, funnyman. A present.”

“Kay. Dick first, though.”

The present had to wait, as usual.

 

* * *

 

 

The selkie, to Kidd's eternal amazement, fucking loved getting fucked. Kidd worked up to it gradually each time, opening him with slow fingers and careful mouth. Then maybe Trafalgar would wrap his clever fingers around Kidd's dick and pull unbelievable pleasure out of him too. Or maybe he’d just wanna like, GO for it.

The selkie didn’t like waiting around for things. The first couple nights they'd spent together after reuniting, he’d quickly gotten impatient with all the prep, and just climbed into Kidd’s lap and onto his dick. Which was so hot it made Kidd go fucking cross-eyed, but quickly got to be too much, too fast. For Kidd, anyway—the pain didn't seem to stop Trafalgar getting off, but hurting him made Kidd feel panicked.

This was the third time, and Trafalgar finally let Kidd set the pace. It was so much better like this—unhurried and exploratory. The selkie just seemed to get more and more sensitive, until he was all pleasure-drunk under Kidd, too boneless and hazy to be his pushy self but still needy as hell.

“Eustass…” was all he could say by the time Kidd was holding his legs apart and sinking into his sensitized body, inch by inch, fucking tight but smooth as silk. He was clutching at Kidd’s arms, trying to make him go faster.

“More?” Kidd dropped his weight against him, hard.

“Eustass! Eustass, ah! Ahh… ah…”

“Call me Kidd? Say it out loud like that.”

“Kidd.”

“Law…”

Kidd plunged into him, slow and deliberate, until the selkie’s frantic neediness got to him and he lost his head too. He was only vaguely aware of grabbing and rutting, tasting sweat and feeling his throat start to burn with exertion.

“Kidd, more, more… ah! Ahhh! Kidd!

Kidd jammed in hard, hands around the narrow waist to hold him in place and mouth at his throat. He dragged jagged teeth over the skin of his neck and the selkie came hard. Kidd followed just after. He hadn’t meant to come inside him, but it felt so fucking good. Kidd kept moving just slightly as they breathed together after, feeling fluid heat slipping between them and leaking out.

“Goddamn… rabies…” Law panted at the human slumped on top of him.

“Yeah.” Kidd raised his head off the sweat-beaded chest and flashed a grin full of chipped teeth up at the selkie. “So what did you get me?”

 

* * *

 

 

It was another knife, this one small and flat with a weighted tip.

“For throwing,” Law explained as he pulled several more out of a pouch. “So the story is, I took them from a—”

“That’s fucking awesome!!” Kidd grabbed them.

“Lemme fucking show you!” the selkie protested.

“I know how knives work.”

After Kidd had sent three of the knives clattering into the darkness, hitting but bouncing off the wooden keg target, he let Law take the last one. With a smug little smile and a deft little wrist flick, Law sank it into the wood.

Kidd flopped over with a huff. “This fucking sucks.”

“Gimme my present too and I’ll show you how I did it.” Law smiled.

“No, you suck too.”

“Just give it to me, I can smell it!”

Law tackled the human and there was a sticky tussle that Kidd won because he grabbed the selkie’s Skin and threatened to use it as a cum rag. Ego restored by this victory, Kidd produced the present of smoked fish.

Around mouthfuls of fish, the selkie told the human about how he’d gotten the knives, and bragged about the battle wounds he’d taken that month—already healed without a trace, of course.

Kidd had new scars too, but he never wanted to talk about them.

The human practiced with the knives and soaked up the much-exaggerated stories as the selkie devoured the fish. Kidd quickly got the hang of the wrist flick and filled the keg with holes. Pretty soon he got bored and draped himself over Law again, fishing for affection.

“I thought you said I sucked,” the selkie teased the human, who was dangling over his shoulders and biting his ear.

“Yeah but I like you anyway.”

 

* * *

 

 

They dozed here and there, waking up to eat or fuck or just talk about random shit. Then before the sky started to lighten, first the selkie and then the human disappeared in different directions into the dark.

 

* * *

 

 

They met in a different location each time—one of the countless little caves dotting the Black Cliffs, all of which Kidd knew by heart. The human brought his selkie smoked fish and samples of land-dweller vices—whiskey, tobacco, sugar. The selkie brought his human interesting weapons and a series of metal curiosities—bayonet, telescope, belt buckle. They couldn’t always meet, especially in the stormy spring months. Sometimes Kidd would prepare a new spot and burn a piece of Law’s hair so he’d know where to look, but the selkie wouldn’t arrive. And sometimes Law would sit on the rocks outside the keep and watch the new moon pass without the human signalling at all. But there was always the next month.

In the spring, the human won a wrestling match without cheating.

In the summer, the selkie asked for the human’s help with a mission, something none of his shifter siblings could know about.

By fall they'd counted seven more nights together—seven pieces of each other stolen from the darkest parts of a single year and hidden away in the little pocket reality of the caves. Under the rising sign of the divine blade, they dared to make a secret promise.

 

* * *

 

 

It went on like this, for a time that youth and desire made seem like forever.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

[End of arc 1]

Art by mysterious, anonymous fanart fairt <3

 

 


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